


Death and Liberty

by JohnAmendAll



Series: Holiday Jobs [4]
Category: Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Awesome Zoe Heriot, Classic Who companions are awesome, Clever Women, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-08
Updated: 2012-11-11
Packaged: 2017-11-15 22:14:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 32,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/532346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JohnAmendAll/pseuds/JohnAmendAll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zoë's visit to a luxury ship is interrupted by a mysterious death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Invitation

**Author's Note:**

> This fic follows from [Extra-Curricular Activity](http://archiveofourown.org/works/489782) and [Relaxation and Recreation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/489784), but it should work without having to read either. Like them, it's set some years after Zoë parted from the Doctor.

When Zoë and I had gone our separate ways, at the end of our visit to the Deep Space R&R Centre, we'd promised to keep in touch, and we'd kept that promise. We'd met now and again, socially, or because Zoë wanted to try out some new extreme sport she'd discovered. We'd usually manage to get through those without any severe injuries, except to our dignity. 

I never brought up the topic of her association with UNISYC, and neither did she. I was pretty sure that was still involved with them, though. Zoë isn't good at lying or covering things up, and once or twice she'd catch herself too late. And one Friday night she turned up on my doorstep, wearing a huge raincoat and with a suitcase chained to her wrist, and asked if she could stay the night. I made her up a bed of sorts on the floor, but I don't think she slept at all. In the morning she left straight after breakfast, and the next time we met she acted as if the whole thing had never happened. 

It wasn't anything out of the ordinary, then, to get a call from her suggesting we take a few days' holiday together. 

"Are you doing anything, Lily?" she asked. That was how she usually started a conversation, when she'd got curious about what it would be like to jump off a bridge with a rubber band attached to her ankles, or ride a glider from the edge of the atmosphere down to near ground level and then parachute the rest of the way. 

"Not particularly," I said. "Why?" 

"Well, I've got an invitation for a week on board the _Liberty_ , and I can bring a friend. I get to stay in Claremoor Holiday Village, no less, starting next Saturday week. How would you like to come along?" 

"I'd love to. But..." It took me a moment to organise my thoughts. "It doesn't sound like your sort of thing. Was it your idea?" 

"No, more of a present. I'll tell you all about it when I see you." 

We talked a bit more, agreeing when and where we'd meet. I didn't manage to steer the conversation back to how she got the tickets, but I did try asking if there was anything particular I should bring. I'm not sure how I'd have reacted if she'd said "fingerprint powder" or "a forensic scanner" but at least I'd have had some idea what was going on. All she told me was that I should dress for hot weather, which I knew already. 

The story goes that _Liberty_ was built decades ago by some crazy billionaire, who wanted to set up a self-propelled offshore tax haven. He spent all of his fortune building her, but she was nowhere near finished by the time he died. Since then, she'd been passed from one owner to another, bringing each of them headaches as they tried to figure out how to make money from her. She ended up being used as an oversized cruise liner, so big that there was hardly anywhere she could dock, and too slow to compete with ships built for the purpose. Now and again, she'd been owned by syndicates who'd thought to use her for illegal purposes, but they'd invariably discovered that while her defences could hold off the occasional pirate, they were no match for a properly-organised navy. 

_Liberty_ 's fortunes had improved with the invention of T-Mat. Now that people and supplies could get on board without the need to shuttle them back and forth, it became a lot easier for people to visit, and a lot easier to make the ship into a place that people would want to visit. When I emerged from the ship's T-Mat terminal, I might have been in an exclusive shopping district in Paris or Volgograd. A spotless glideway whisked me to the exclusive 'holiday village' where we were staying, and I met Zoë in a luxuriously-appointed suite. Within minutes, we'd changed into bikinis, put on dark glasses and sunscreen, and made our way to a private balcony where two well-padded sunloungers were waiting for us. 

We started by taking a good long look at the view. Above the main deck, the superstructure of _Liberty_ was shaped like a horseshoe, with the open end pointing forward. Each level was stepped back from the last one, and the whole thing ended up looking something like a scaled-up stadium, open at one end. At that end, we could see the sea, tranquil and dark blue. It was a sunny day; according to the brochure, it almost always was. The weather control stations could give enough notice of scheduled rain for _Liberty_ to move out of the way in time. 

Our balcony was somewhere in the curved bit of the horseshoe, to the left of the centre, and fairly high up. To left and right there were other balconies, and we could look up and down to where the adjacent floors had similar arrangements, but they were all far enough away to give us a sense of privacy. 

Once we'd got a good idea of the layout, we settled down for an afternoon's sunbathing — and, I hoped, some idea of why we were there. 

"All right," I said, once we'd got comfortable. "Spill the beans." 

"I don't know what you mean," Zoë said. She didn't sound the least bit convincing. 

"I mean what we're doing here. Usually when you want me to do something with you, it's dangerous and uncomfortable. Bog-snorkelling or hang-skateboarding or something." 

"I've never suggested we go hang-skateboarding. In fact, I don't think there even is such a sport. If you're going to start making things up I might as well drop this conversation now." She lay back on her lounger with a grin and put her hands behind her head. 

I sat up slightly and looked around. Conveniently close by my hand was a drinks dispenser, with an attachment for making ice. I pressed the appropriate button, and the machine obligingly spat out an icecube, with the word 'Liberty' etched through it. I took the cube, leaned over Zoë's couch, and dropped it onto her exposed midriff. She shrieked, and sat bolt upright, grabbing at the ice. 

"I surrender," she said, and threw the melting icecube back at me. "I can't stand up to torture. What do you want to know?" 

"Let's start at the beginning," I said. "How did you get us asked out here in the first place? You said it was a present." 

"Yes. From UNI... you-know-who." 

"Did they say why?" 

"They said two of their people were going to come and then had to cancel, and was I interested? Maybe I could take a friend." 

"Do you think they meant me?" I asked. 

"Quite possibly. You're the only one of my friends they've met... at least, as far as I know." 

"I don't like it. It sounds as if they want us here for something." 

Zoë lay back on her couch again. "Go on," she said. 

"What do you mean, go on?" 

"Assuming you're correct and we've been deliberately sent here, what follows from that?" 

I racked my brains. "There's something wrong here. Or there may be. If they were sure what it was, they'd send a trained agent, not us. You aren't a trained agent, are you?" 

"No. Go on." 

"I can't think of any more." 

"How about this? If we've been sent to investigate something, it's been going on for a while. I got the invitations a fortnight ago. I think they aren't sure if there is anything to investigate, and they think perhaps we'll spot something, or make someone nervous enough to show their hand. They've used me for that before." 

I didn't ask when; that was the sort of topic we didn't discuss. 

"Next," Zoë continued, "this ship is a huge place, almost a small city. It's got every sort of accommodation. It would have been perfectly easy to put us in one of the normal hotels. But they got us invited here, and that can't have been easy — it's very exclusive." 

"So you think whatever's happening is happening here? I mean, in this part of the ship?" 

"Probably. I can't be sure, of course, and we certainly shouldn't rule any possibilities out at this stage." She looked across at me. "Any ideas?" 

"Let's see. We need to find out more about the people round here. You know, are they all here for a few days like us, or are there long-term residents?" 

Zoë nodded. "If this has been going on some time, it's more likely the person involved is living here permanently. Of course, it doesn't necessarily follow. You remember when we investigated that murder before, all the suspects were short-term visitors, but the conspiracy behind it had been going on for years." 

"I remember." I'd been very relieved, on the other holidays we'd taken, that nothing similar had happened. "And I suppose we should explore the ship, so we know our way around." 

"Explore the ship, with particular reference to the shops and the nightclubs?" Zoë asked mischievously. 

"Why not? We're on holiday." 

"Fine. But remember to keep an eye out." 

I closed my eyes and lay back. "And all of it can wait until I've got some more sun." 

Zoë, curse her, waited until I was half-asleep before retaliating in kind for my prank with the ice.


	2. Afternoon Tea

After a couple of days on _Liberty_ , we were no closer to finding out what was going on, or even if anything was going on at all. We'd toured the main shopping areas, visited one or two casinos (but kept our moneypens firmly in our pockets) and thoroughly researched the nightlife. We'd also explored some public areas of the ship that weren't so geared to tourists, walking hand in hand between echoing, empty lines of storage tanks, or eating lunch in a small café that appeared to be almost entirely populated by burly technicians eating fried breakfasts. I'd felt horribly out of place, but the cashier took our money without comment, and nobody had seemed to mind our presence. 

At the moment, we were standing on a small observation platform, painted in faded grey, that could only be reached by climbing a ladder from the deck below. Its only feature was a rusty-looking mounting that could once have held a telescope, or a weapon. Looking out over the waves, we could see another ship in the middle distance, keeping pace with _Liberty_. I guessed it was one of the robotic escort vessels that accompanied the ship wherever she went; we'd been told there were four. 

"We don't seem to have done much," I said. 

Zoë didn't look concerned in the least; she looked relaxed, more relaxed than I'd ever seen her before. 

"It'll work out," she said. "One way or the other." 

"You sound very confident." 

"Well, I'm guessing. You-know-who" (which was how we referred to UNISYC, between ourselves) "haven't told me anything — they must have sent me here just on the off-chance that there's something about me that might stir up trouble. If I do, we can call for help and the cavalry will show up in minutes. If not, we might as well enjoy ourselves." 

"Then shouldn't you be trying to cause trouble? Asking everyone questions and trying to find out things they want to keep hidden?" 

Zoë shook her head firmly. "No. I'm trying to behave normally. I'm terrible at it. Anyone with half a brain would spot me at once." 

"And that's enough to make them give themselves away?" 

"The theory is that they can see I'm hiding something, and they spend all their time trying to find out what, and that's how they give themselves away." She shrugged. "It sounds silly, but it does work from time to time." 

"So that's why you're spending all your time investigating that lad we met," I said. "It's all part of the act." 

"What lad?" Zoë was certainly not going to win any prizes for her acting. 

"You know the one. That chemistry student. What was his name?" 

"Kirabo," Zoë said, suspiciously quickly even for someone with her memory. "And don't look at me like that, Lily. I don't see why I shouldn't have a bit of fun while I'm here, and he's got a lovely accent." 

"As long as you don't forget why we're here, and I can't believe I'm the one saying that to you." 

"Spoilsport." Zoë picked at the flaking paint on the telescope mount. "It can't do any harm." 

"You weren't like this back on the asteroid. You wouldn't even drink." 

"I've been trying to develop my emotional side since then." 

"Is it working?" 

"Oh, I think so. Last time I had a psych check my emotional intelligence had increased by 23%." 

She said this so solemnly that I couldn't help laughing; Zoë, after a moment, joined in. 

"Anyway," she said. "We'd better get moving. We're down for tea this afternoon with Lord Claremoor, just in case you've forgotten." 

*

Lord Claremoor was the owner of the 'holiday village' we were staying in— probably not the physical structure, since that was part of the ship, but everything else, from the carpets and furniture to the cleaning robots. He, or his staff, vetted all applications from would-be guests, almost as if he was running a house party rather than a glorified hotel. I wasn't sure if the invitation to tea was a normal part of the programme, or whether it was a special privilege we'd been admitted to. Perhaps something about the way we'd been booked in had attracted his attention, and he wanted a closer look at us. 

His lordship's apartment was in the same building, if that's the right term, as ours. It was a couple of levels down from ours, on the far side of a verdant indoor garden with a fountain at its centre. When we got there and pressed the buzzer, his lordship himself let us in. He was a tall, skinny man with a shock of white hair and a slightly abstracted expression, and he greeted us as if he was genuinely pleased to see us. Of course, that might just have been good manners. He led us to a room he called the 'parlour', which had glass-topped specimen tables all round the walls, and a cluster of chairs in the middle. Several of the chairs were already occupied, and his Lordship introduced us to everyone in turn. 

First up was a striking-looking woman in her thirties, who was introduced as the honourable Tabitha Khan, of the Space Scouts. I saw Zoë's eyes widen a bit at that, but before there was time for anything more than a couple of polite commonplaces we were being presented to a Ms Witana, an elderly lady who hardly deigned to notice us, let alone talk to us. 

By way of contrast, Lord Claremoor's other guest was a large, jovial man who greeted us like long-lost friends. His name turned out to be Martin Dupont, and he described himself simply as a traveller, who wrote accounts of his journeys for his friends. I wondered if he was going to write us up, and if he did what sort of showing we'd make. 

Once we'd shaken hands and sat down on a rather lumpy sofa, Lord Claremoor rang a handbell and a man arrived with the tea things on a tray. This turned out to be his lordship's secretary, Graves. I wondered if that was his real name; he looked as if he was trying to play the part of a discreet manservant or a stately butler, but there was something about him I didn't think rang true. 

The conversation started with the usual hopes that we were enjoying ourselves and that we found our quarters comfortable. Then there was a momentary lull, which was broken by Ms Witana. 

"What brings you here, Dr Heriot?" she asked. "Business, or pleasure?" 

"Pleasure, I hope," Zoë said. 

"Allow me to share that hope. Employers can be so demanding, can't they?" 

"Well, yes." 

"Some more than others, of course. Who are you working for, Dr Heriot?" 

Zoë mentioned the name of some corporation or other — I suppose the people who employed her in her day job. But Ms Witana had put the question as if it was a challenge. 

"I see," she said. "I imagine you find them more reasonable employers than, say, Sir Charles Harwood?" 

That shaft definitely went home. I could feel Zoë go tense, and she gripped her teacup so tightly that her knuckles went white. 

"He went mad in the end, didn't he?" Ms Khan cut in. "Didn't they say no-one lasted more than a week working for him?" 

"In my case, it was four days," Zoë said, looking relieved at the interruption. 

"The wonderful world of business." 

"I know. It must all seem very mundane to a Space Scout." 

Ms Khan laughed. "Don't believe everything you hear about us. It's not all about space dogfights and thrilling undercover missions." 

"Those still happen, though, don't they?" There was no trace of tension on Zoë's face now; she was leaning forward in her chair, with an expression of pure enthusiasm. "I mean, you're the one who saved the _Pacifica_ , aren't you?" 

"Yes, I am. But my point stands. That was a chance in a thousand. If you expected that to happen every day you'd be disappointed." She gave a half-resigned smile. "I suppose you want to hear the inside story? Everyone does." 

"If it isn't too much trouble..." 

"An interesting young person, your friend," Lord Claremoor said. I jumped, realising he was addressing me. "I'm very glad you could both come." 

I tried to make some suitable answer. "We're honoured to be here. It's very good of you—" 

"No, no, my dear. Don't say anything you might regret later." He chuckled. "After tea, I shall take you round my collection. Then you can decide whether my motives are philanthropic or selfish." 

"A captive audience, you see," Mr Dupont said. "That's how it goes." 

"I'm afraid so." Lord Claremoor gestured at the glass-topped tables. "I am, perhaps, a little too proud of my collection, but I do enjoy sharing it with those who appreciate it." 

"Thank you," I said. "I hope I will." 

"Martin, of course, has seen it before," Lord Claremoor said, nodding at Mr Dupont. "But I daresay there will be one or two pieces new even to him." 

"Are you a collector, too?" I asked Mr Dupont. 

"Dear me, no. I prefer to travel light." 

"What sorts of places do you go?" 

"Wherever the fancy takes me. Last week, I was in Luhansk." 

"I'm sure that was in the news recently," I said, and tried to cast my mind back. 

"You're thinking of the breakin at that museum?" He laughed. "Don't worry, that wasn't anything to do with me. That was all done and dusted before I got there." 

"Art theft, wasn't it?" Ms Witana said. "Someone made off with a couple of portraits." 

"That's right. The police recovered them after a couple of days." 

"Weren't they found abandoned in a protein reclamation centre?" I asked. 

Ms Witana nodded. "Indeed they were. Why a well-organised gang would go to such lengths to secure the goods, and then just dump them... Maybe one day, we'll learn the full story." 

The challenging tone was back in her voice, as if she suspected one or other of us knew more than we were letting on. If her remarks had been aimed at Mr Dupont, he showed no indication of being put out by them. Instead, he turned to me. 

"I presume you and your friend have plans for this evening?" he said. 

I shrugged. "I daresay we'll go out somewhere. I don't know. Why?" 

"Well, if you're at a loose end, or some difficulty arises, let me know. I'm sure I'll be able to get around it." 

"That's... very kind of you," I said warily, wondering what he might want from me in return. 

After tea, his lordship conducted us round his collection. There didn't seem to be any overriding theme to it; as far as I could see, it consisted of whatever his family had thought vaguely interesting over the centuries. Some of the objects looked perfectly ordinary, but apparently had interesting stories attached. The only one of these we got to hear was related to an otherwise unremarkable key, which had apparently been a love token used by a Claremoor a century or two ago. 

"I'm afraid they didn't live happily ever after," he concluded, carefully returning the key to its rightful place between a battered-looking antique brooch and a triangular, mirror-bright, silver tablet. "In the end, he poisoned her, or so legend has it." He closed the specimen table, and turned to the next. "This carving was excavated in Crete by Sir Rupert, my several-times-great uncle. At least, that's what the old rogue told the family. I wouldn't put it past him to have had it made to order..." 

I wasn't sure whether our reactions were what he'd hoped for. Zoë seemed quite receptive to what she was hearing, but indiscriminately; she treated everything with the same semi-detached curiosity. And while I managed to stop myself yawning, I did feel guilty about not showing enough interest. 

Almost as soon as the tour was over, Lord Claremoor sent us on our way, with more good wishes for our holiday. We were the first to leave; I wondered if his lordship had invited his other guests to look us over, and now they were going to deliver their verdicts. I'd hoped to have the same sort of conversation with Zoë, but the moment we got back to our suite she said she needed to freshen up and disappeared into her bedroom. I ended up talking to her through the closed door. 

"What was that Witana woman talking about this afternoon?" I asked. 

"What do you mean?" Zoë said, her voice muffled by the door. 

"You know. Sir Charles Whoever. What's the story there?" 

"It's too long to tell you now. The point is, it was you-know-who that got me involved with him. And she was letting me know that she knows that." 

"That's got to mean she's—" I gestured vaguely, even though Zoë couldn't see me. "She's mixed up with all this intelligence stuff, somehow." 

"Yes. I wonder if she's working for the opposition." 

"What opposition?" 

"I don't know. But you-know-who aren't the only security agency in the Universe. Maybe she's from one of the other ones, and we've been sent here to stop her doing... something." 

"What?" 

Zoë sounded slightly put out. "Well, I don't know, do I?" 

"Only I'd have thought they'd have warned you about her." 

"I'll leave you to think about that. I'm going out with Kirabo now." 

"On a date?" 

"Don't sound so surprised." The bedroom door finally opened and Zoë came out, wearing a short, shimmering skirt — it was the first time I'd ever known her to choose a skirt rather than trousers — and a matching jacket. "It's a double date, with a couple of his friends." 

"Well, don't do anything I wouldn't." 

She grinned wickedly. "That doesn't rule out an awful lot, does it?"


	3. Night Garden

I prefer not to think about how I spent that evening. Zoë had gone off for her date with Kirabo, and I suppose I was feeling jealous of her. I ended up in a karaoke bar, had too much to drink, and ended up halfway through _I Loved a Spaceman_ before realising the song was actually supposed to be _Venus Rising_. Looking back, I'm surprised I wasn't pelted with rotten vegetables, but perhaps nobody had thought to bring any. 

Zoë and I had agreed that we'd meet outside the Holiday Village, at midnight. I was there in plenty of time; Zoë hurried up at the last minute, looking as if she'd had to run the length of the ship to do it. 

"Sorry about that," she said. "I lost track of time." 

"You didn't have to hurry back," I said. "You could have sent me a message or something." 

"I suppose I could have done. Oh, well, it's too late now." 

"Did I drag you away from Prince Charming?" 

"Who?" Zoë paused in momentary confusion. "Oh. Cinderella. Fairy tale. The protagonist is forced to leave the ball at midnight." She looked down at her feet. "I've still got both my shoes, so I'm afraid your parallel isn't exact. And all my underwear, just in case you're interested." 

I held up my hands. "Too much information! Come on, let's get inside — it's getting chilly out here." 

Zoë put her hand on the palm scanner, and the outer door of the Holiday Village slid open. We made our way in, trying not to make too much noise; the thick carpets made that quite easy. The hallways and staircases through which we passed were lit, but only dimly. 

We'd reached the indoor garden and were passing the entrance to Lord Claremoor's apartments, when I saw something lying on the ground. In the dim light, I didn't immediately realise what it was, but something about it made me come to a stop and catch my breath. 

It was a dead man. 

I suppose, thinking back on it, that I didn't actually know he was dead at the time. At first glance, he could have been asleep, or perhaps even an elaborate dummy. But something about the way he was lying, with his limbs curled into oddly-distorted positions, made me jump to the right conclusion straight away. He was face-down in the flowerbed, wearing a fairly nondescript dark suit. 

"Zoë!" I said, though it came out more as a croak. 

Zoë had been a few paces ahead of me; she stopped, looked round, and saw what I'd seen. I could see the blood drain from her face, and for a moment she stood completely still. Then she knelt down by the body, and felt for a pulse. 

"He's dead," she said. 

When we'd investigated that other murder, we hadn't discovered the body — in fact, we hadn't even seen it. I'd have been quite grateful if matters had stayed like that. There was a buzzing in my ears, and Zoë's voice seemed to be coming from a great distance away. 

"I think it's Mr Dupont," she continued. "We need to call Ship Security... Lily?" 

I'm a bit hazy about the next half-minute or so, but at the end of it I was sitting on a low wall with my head between my knees. Zoë was holding my hand, with a sort of medical detachment. 

"Mild shock, by the look of it," she was saying. 

"I'm all right," I mumbled. 

"I need to put that call through. I think you'd better stay put. I won't be long." 

I sat up, mainly trying to concentrate on not being sick, and watched her hurry across the garden in the direction of our suite, leaving me alone with only the gentle sound of the fountain for company. Once I felt a bit steadier on my feet, I went back to where the body was lying. It gave me the creeps to look at it, but somehow I felt as if it was my duty. I didn't touch the body or try to examine it — that was a job for the professionals — but perhaps I could try to reconstruct what had happened. 

It looked as if Mr Dupont, if it was Mr Dupont, had been coming out of his own quarters. But instead of turning right or left, he'd crossed the path and tumbled into the flower bed. It didn't seem likely that it was an accident, unless one of the plants he'd fallen onto happened to have poisonous spines or something; and that seemed extremely unlikely in such a carefully- planned garden. The vegetation, apart from a few plants that had probably been knocked askew by the falling body, showed no signs of a struggle, and there were no marks in the soil except where Zoë had knelt. Perhaps, as he emerged from the doorway, someone had stabbed or shot him, pushed the body into the flowerbed... and then what? 

Before I could make any further progress on that line of thought, Zoë joined me again, looking puzzled. 

"Did you get through to Security?" I asked. 

She nodded. "They'll be sending someone down here straight away. The thing is, I also put a call through to you-know-who." 

"And?" 

"They said we should co-operate with the investigation. That's all. They aren't sending any of their own agents, and they don't want us to do anything on their behalf." She shook her head. "It was almost as if they weren't interested. You see the implication, of course." 

"Sorry, I don't." 

Zoë gave me the same impatient look she always used when I couldn't keep up with her. 

"We've been sent here for a reason," she said. "We've discussed that. Now a dead body turns up and we're instructed not to take any steps in the matter. Doesn't that suggest anything to you?" 

I shook my head. "I can't think of anything at the moment except..." I pointed at the body, unable to complete the sentence. 

"Well, there are at least two possibilities. One is that this is a distraction—" 

"A distraction!" 

"I mean, from their point of view. If so, whatever they sent us for isn't connected with this death. And the other possibility is that we've already done what they sent us here for." 

"You mean—" My throat went dry at the thought. "You don't mean this is something to do with us?" 

"Well, I'm reasonably sure I didn't kill him," Zoë said. "And, purely for the sake of argument, I'll assume you didn't either." 

"Of course I didn't kill him!" 

"Maybe I can take your word for that, but the police will want proof. Anyway, my point was that perhaps we caused all this just by being here." 

Before she could expand on that point, we heard someone approaching. We drew back into a sheltered alcove, in case it was the killer coming back with designs on us. Zoë dropped into a crouch and pulled me down too; I could feel her trembling, but whether with fear or excitement I wasn't sure. 

A moment later, when we realised that the new arrivals were just the men from Security, we stood up again and hurried across to them. I have no idea what they thought we were playing at.


	4. The Morning After

By the time Senior Investigator Holmberg was done with us, it was getting on for two in the morning and neither of us was in much of a state for logical thinking. We told him, separately, how we'd found the body, and tried to account for our movements over the previous few hours. Then he sent us to our suite, and told us we'd be locked in: if we wanted to leave, we'd have to get his permission first. 

After my late night, I didn't wake up very early. When I eventually did surface, I found Zoë at the computer terminal, looking as if she'd stumbled out of bed about five minutes before I had, if that, and thrown on the first garments she could find. 

"Hello," she said. "Any news?" 

I shrugged. "You tell me. You're the one who's read her mail." 

She pointed at the screen. "These are the security officers' reports from last night. You-know-who got hold of copies somehow and sent them to me. That probably means they don't think we're the ones who killed Mr Dupont." 

"I should think so, too!" 

"Anyway, I've been reading them. It looks like an outside job. The funny thing is—" 

"You can tell me after breakfast," I said. "I can't deal with all this on an empty stomach." 

*

Just as on the day we'd arrived, we were on the balcony outside our room, the sky was clear, and the sun was shining. This time, though, we were fully clothed and sitting facing each other. Despite the warm weather, I felt cold inside. 

"It's like this," Zoë said. "Mr Dupont was seen alive at 19:34, in Oakland Court Market. Security haven't been able to trace his movements after that, but he used the palm scanner to get in here at 22:10. Medical evidence says he was dead within the hour. 

"Obviously, they've checked up on everybody in the block. Kirabo and his friends can vouch for me, and you were seen in Old Joe Hawkins' Karaoke Bar And Grill—" 

"—Making a complete fool of myself," I interrupted hastily. 

Zoë grinned. "You certainly stuck in people's minds. It's quite fortunate, in the circumstances. Anyway, we're out of it." 

"So who does that leave?" 

"That's the thing," Zoë said, becoming serious again. "If you believe the palm scanner records, nobody opened the main door between Mr Dupont at 22:10, and us at a minute past midnight." 

"Wouldn't that mean it was one of the residents who did it?" 

"Not necessarily. The killer could have got in earlier and hidden somewhere. But it looks as if he or she didn't have to. Imagine you're walking from the main entrance to the garden, like we did last night. Just before you get there, on your left, there's an emergency exit — can you picture it?" 

I tried in vain, and shook my head. "Sorry." 

"Well, it's supposed to open only from the inside. But someone's melted the lock completely out. I'll show you the crime scene holos if you like." 

"I see." I tried to reconstruct what must have happened. "Someone burns their way in through the emergency door, walks to Mr Dupont's apartment, and knocks on the door. Dupont answers, gets blasted, and the killer leaves before anyone comes to investigate." 

"That's about it. In fact, nobody did." 

From Zoë's expression, I could tell that we were getting to something she thought was interesting. 

"Just about everyone was somewhere else at the time," she said. "They've all got their reasons, and they're all perfectly — well — reasonable. But how could the killer count on that?" 

"Is that what you thought was funny?" 

"That's it." She stood up, and leaned on the balcony railing, looking out over the ship. "It makes me think they must have had someone on the inside." 

"You mean, to let the murderer know when the coast was clear?" 

"Or to arrange for the coast to _be_ clear. Get everyone out of the way somehow." 

"Yes." I joined her at the railing. "Zoë, you know when we found the body, and you said you-know-who weren't interested in the investigation? Do you think they were involved in the murder themselves?" 

"I suppose it's possible." Zoë considered the matter. "And they'd have censored the information they sent me. But if they are involved, why would they send us here in the first place?" 

I shrugged. "I don't know." 

"Anyway, that's the state of play. What do you feel like doing today, assuming they let us out of here at some point?" 

"What do you mean? Won't you want to talk to witnesses and so on?" 

Zoë shook her head. "We're under instructions not to interfere, remember?" 

I looked at her closely. She was trying to hide it, but it was obvious that she wasn't happy about not getting to run an investigation of her own. 

"We could still chat to the other residents," I said. "I mean, we're all cooped up here together. It's only natural." 

I could see her waver, but then something snapped inside her. 

"It might be natural for you," she said sharply. "I'm a madgirl, remember? No-one's going to believe in natural curiosity, or natural anything else, from me. I'm just a tool to be used or left in the box, as appropriate. You go and chat to people, if you want. Tell me if you come up with anything. I'm going to call Kirabo and try to pretend I'm a normal person." 

She headed indoors. 

*

After Zoë's minor outburst of temper, I decided she needed some space. Not without a qualm or two, I went down to the garden to see if anyone else was about. Though Mr Dupont's body had been removed, the area where it had lain was still taped off, and a number of tripods topped with spiky black devices, presumably some kind of crime scene gadgets, had appeared in the middle of the vegetation. 

In the event, there was someone there. Ms Witana was standing just outside the taped area, standing so still that she reminded me of a recording angel on a tombstone. She looked round as she heard my footsteps. 

"Ah," she said. "Ms Carson. On your own today?" 

"Yes," I said. 

"Bad business." She turned her attention back to the crime scene. "You found the body, didn't you?" 

"I... I suppose I did." 

"And you were with Dr Heriot at the time. I suppose you'd been together all evening?" 

I shook my head. "No, she had a date. We only met just outside the door." 

Ms Witana turned slowly, and fixed me with a penetrating look. "Did you, now?" 

"Yes," I said, wondering what I'd said wrong. "I went to a karaoke bar." 

"Hmm." 

I tried to change the subject. "Did you see anything?" 

"No," she said. "I didn't get back from Portugal till past one, local time." 

"Portugal?" 

"I had a business meeting in Amadora. One of those annoying things that needs sorting out in person." She shrugged. "As it turned out, I needn't have bothered, but the firm'll pay for the T-Mat fares. Lucky for me, in a way. I can prove I was nowhere near here at the time." 

"I suppose I can, too," I said. 

"Yes. I wonder about your friend, though. How well do you know her?" 

"Fairly well," I lied. The truth was, for all the time I'd spent in Zoë's company, I didn't know much more about her than when we'd first met as girls at school. She never spoke of her family, for example: for all I knew, she could have been grown in a jar in a lab somewhere. 

"I wonder." 

"Do you know her, then?" I asked. "I mean, yesterday you were asking her about a job she'd had with Sir Charles..." 

"Harwood. Yes. Did she tell you that by the end of it, he was dead?" 

My jaw dropped. "Do you mean—" 

"The official story is that he died in an accidental fire. The only person who knows what actually happened is sharing a suite with you. Didn't tell you that, did she?" Ms Witana's eyes were drilling into me. "No, I don't think she did. You might want to keep that in mind." 

Before I had time to come up with a coherent answer, or another line of questioning, she'd left me alone with my thoughts. 

*

I didn't want to stay in that garden, and I didn't want to see Zoë until I'd had time to think about what Ms Witana had told me. The way to the outside world was still taped off, but there were plenty of other doorways around the garden. I picked one more or less at random, a gothic arch surrounded by carefully-trained ivy. Behind the arch was a spiral staircase leading up. Its floor and walls felt and sounded like real stone, and I wondered briefly why Lord Claremoor had felt it necessary to build such an old-fashioned thing; the rest of the Holiday Village was quite up to date. 

At the top of the staircase — I estimated two or three floors above the level of the garden — a doorway led to a small room, its walls lined with seashells. The floor was a mosaic of white and blue tiles, with a design of cockle shells. Portholes along one wall admitted daylight. All there was by way of furniture was two wooden chairs, painted light blue. 

I was still feeling enough of a detective to look under the chairs, just in case there were clues there, but I didn't find anything. Then I sat down and tried to make sense of the conversation I'd just had. If Ms Witana was right — and she'd sounded confident enough of her information — there was a good chance that Zoë had more of a connection to this incident than I'd thought. Maybe more than she thought, too. Once or twice, I'd seen her doing complicated tasks without seeming to realise what she was doing. Could that really extend to assassination? And was that what she meant by people using and discarding her like a tool? 

My train of thought was making me steadily more nervous, and I'd just reached that point when I heard slow footsteps approaching, up the stairs. I stood up, and went over to the door in time to see Graves, the secretary, come round the turn. He didn't notice me until he was quite close, and when he saw me, he jumped. 

"Sorry, ma'am," he said. "I didn't know as anybody was up here." 

"I'm not trespassing, am I?" I asked. 

"Oh, no. It's just that this room don't get a lot of visitors, as a rule." 

"No, I suppose not. I wouldn't be here in the normal way of things. But after last night... things aren't exactly normal, are they?" 

"Certainly not, ma'am. Terrible. Who'd do such a thing, that's what I'd like to know." 

"I suppose you didn't see or hear anything?" 

"Not a thing. His lordship was going through the accounts with me all evening. First we heard was when that Senior Investigator came knocking at the door. And since then..." He shook his head. "We've had them in and out all morning, turning everything upside down. Don't know what they were looking for. It's not as if there's any suggestion of burglary, and his lordship don't keep blasters in the place." 

"No, I suppose not," I said. The man looked worried, but that was only natural. He'd doubtless told the investigators what he was now telling me, trying to convince them that he hadn't been involved in Dupont's death. I couldn't think of any possible reason why he would, but obviously they'd explore all possibilities, and it was early days yet. "Do you know how long we're going to have to stay here?" 

"I wouldn't know, ma'am. You'll have to ask Mr Holmberg." 

"I'll try and find him, then." 

"Right you are, ma'am. I won't be a moment up here." He glanced vaguely around the room. "One of Ms Khan's earrings went missing, you see, day before yesterday. I wondered if she might have dropped it here." 

"I don't think it could be here," I said. "If it was you couldn't miss it. I'll keep an eye out for it, just in case. What does it look like?" 

"Silver, with blue stones, ma'am. Like a little cluster of grapes." 

"If I do find it, I'll let you know," I said, and headed downstairs. 

*

When I came down to the garden again, one of Mr Holmberg's subordinates was on duty by the taped-off area. I wondered if he was supposed to be on guard — and, if so, where he'd been when I'd had been talking to Ms Witana. I asked him if he knew how long we were going to be cooped up here. 

"Probably just for the rest of the morning," he said. "There's a couple of points the chief needs to check, but it's pretty clear the killer came from outside." 

"Do you think you'll catch him?" I asked. 

"We usually get our man," he said, though with so little conviction that he might as well have been reciting 'Mary had a little lamb.' "The chief'll probably put out a call for witnesses." 

"Well, good luck," I said, and went back up to the suite Zoë and I were occupying. At first I thought Zoë had gone out, but then I heard voices from the balcony. I headed that way, and found Zoë in the company of the honourable Tabitha Khan. She looked up as I came out onto the balcony. 

"Oh, there you are," she said. "Come and sit down. Any news?" 

"They still want us to stay here for now," I said, joining them at the table. "But it should only be till the afternoon." 

"About time too. Much longer and I'd have hung a rope off the balcony and tried to make my escape." 

"First catch your rope," Ms Khan said, with a smile. 

"That's a point. I wonder if you could program a food machine to make one. Perhaps if you interleaved liquorice strands in the right way..." 

"You'd get recaptured at once. You'd have liquorice all over your hands. And you know what all the headlines would say: 'Caught purple-handed.'" 

"I'd be tempted to try anyway." Zoë sipped at her iced tea. "Tabitha was just telling me she how she missed all the excitement last night." 

"Most nights I'd have been here," Ms Khan said. "But that night I was out to dinner. I didn't get back here till past two." 

"We'd been interrogated and gone to bed by then," I said. 

"Sensible. Actually, I was out for most of the afternoon, too. I'd lost one of my best earrings the day before." 

"I know. I saw Mr Graves looking for it this morning." 

Ms Khan shook her head. "I still can't work out how it went missing. Anyway, I went shopping for replacements. There's a good jeweller's shop in Oakland Court." 

"What's it called?" Zoë asked. 

"Tenbury's." She looked at Zoë, who was still dressed unapologetically for comfort rather than fashion. "Not your sort of place, I'd have thought." 

Zoë shrugged. "I don't know, until I've seen it. I suppose you're a regular customer?" 

"No, that was my first time in the place. Martin recommended it to me." 

"Really?" Zoë said. "I wouldn't have expected him to be an expert on jewellery shops." 

Ms Khan smiled. "No, but he prides— prided— himself on knowing that sort of thing. You know, the one restaurant in town where they cook alligator en croute the right way. He'd make it his business to know who the best jewellers were, even if he never went there himself." 

"That's what he meant, then," I said. The other two looked puzzled, so I explained. "At the tea with Lord Claremoor, he was trying to give me his recommendations for a night out. Or maybe sell us dodgy tickets to some show or other. I wasn't sure." 

"That sounds about right for him." 

"It made me wonder what he'd want in return." I shrugged. "How well did you know him?" 

"We'd met a couple of times before, when I had my fifteen minutes of fame. Anyway, Tenbury's came up with a close enough match for me to wear that night. I needed to look my best for dinner that evening, you see." 

"Who were you dining with?" Zoë said, and caught herself. "Sorry, it isn't any of my business." 

"It's hardly a secret — you'd probably find it on the news services if you did a search. Opening of the new terminal at Matusi Spaceport. I think I was just there to make up the numbers. Jakob Andreyev was the one cutting the ribbon and giving the speeches." She looked at our faces. "I take it you don't approve of him?" 

I'd tried to hide my reaction, but obviously not well enough. 

"I don't trust him," I said. "I mean, he makes all those speeches about patriotism and tariffs and redistribution and so on, but you get the feeling he really wants to invade somewhere." 

Ms Khan shook her head. "I think you're exaggerating." 

"Well, I wouldn't vote for him, anyway." 

"Lots of people do," Zoë said. 

It looked as if the conversation was going to turn to politics, but Ms Khan brought us back to the murder. 

"I suppose your room's been searched?" she said. 

Zoë nodded. "This morning. While you were out, Lily. I presume they were looking for the weapon." 

"I wouldn't expect them to find it. If the murderer came from outside they'd take it away with them." 

"Well, exactly. None of us has been allowed to leave, so if we're here and the weapon isn't, the murderer isn't any of us. QED." 

Not long after that, Ms Khan bade us farewell and went back to her room. 

"I don't see how she can have anything to do with it," I said, once she'd gone. 

Zoë nodded. "I don't think she can have been lying about being at a public dinner. It would be too easy to disprove." 

I could guess where she was heading. "But?" 

"But it worries me a bit; it's just such a good alibi for her. I'd like to know when that dinner was arranged, and who knew about it." 

"You mean someone could have set it up deliberately, to get her out of the way?" 

Zoë spread her hands. "I haven't the least idea. But if I were Holmberg, I'd ask about that. Just for my satisfaction." 

Another point struck me. "Did you mean that about the gun? I mean, supposing someone here was involved. Couldn't they have got rid of it somehow?" I looked over the balcony, all the way down to the deck. "What if they threw it out of a window?" 

"It's unlikely," Zoë said. "Someone would have found it by now. I suppose you could bury it in the garden in a shielded box, or disguise it so it doesn't look like a blaster any more. You know, take the barrel off and it looks like a moneypen and so on. But it can't be as easy to hide something like that as the vids make out." 

"If it was someone here, it would have to be Lord Claremoor or Graves, wouldn't it?" I said. "Everyone else was out. What if one of those things in his collection..." I shook my head. 

"Maybe if Mr Dupont had been stabbed. Or bashed over the head. But there wasn't anything in there that could burn a hole through a person, let alone a door."


	5. Routine Investigation

It was mid-afternoon before the investigators finally decided that we could once again come and go as we wanted. Zoë decided straight away that she wanted to go out, and we took the glideway to Oakland Court Market. 

"I thought you weren't supposed to be doing any investigating?" I'd said to her. 

"Who says I am?" she'd replied, with a wide-eyed look that didn't fool me for a moment. "Perhaps I'm just going out for an afternoon's shopping." 

Oakland Court Market wasn't the most exclusive shopping area on board _Liberty_ , but it had a good claim to being the largest, not to mention the most complicated. At first glance it looked fairly simple: from the glideway terminal you came out into a broad corridor with a vaulted roof, lined on both sides with shops. But then there were side passages, and more side passages, and staircases leading up or down. You might find an area filled with stalls in alcoves, or an alley built to look two hundred years old and lined with quaint-looking shops, or just a big hall filled with different types of merchandise. 

"It goes on forever," I said, as we rounded a corner and found ourselves in a crowd of people watching a demonstration of a new cleaning robot. 

"Yes." Zoë rubbed her head. "It's like... Sorry, I can't think of a good simile. Something that's bigger inside than outside." 

"Snoopy's kennel?" 

"No, that's only one big room inside. I was thinking of something with lots of little rooms." This time, she clutched her head with both hands. "I know I've seen something like that, but I can't place it." 

"Are you all right?" 

"Fine," she said firmly. "We're wasting time. Let's get on with it." She certainly didn't give the impression that 'it' was bargain hunting. 

We wandered around the market for a while, though the route Zoë chose certainly wasn't aimless or random. It felt almost as if she'd come up with a mathematical search pattern, some way of making sure we were missing nothing out. It certainly wasn't conducive to an enjoyable afternoon's shopping. 

After some time, Zoë came to a stop in a gently-curving alley, in front of a building that looked like a small fortress, or perhaps a storage facility for rocket fuel. It took me a moment before I noticed the discreet holographic displays on either side of the entrance door, and the name of the shop above them: Tenbury's. The door itself was closed, and a panel beside it instructed prospective customers to ring for admission. Zoë made straight for it. 

"Are you seriously going in there?" I asked. 

Zoë looked puzzled. "Why not?" 

I glanced at the nearest hologram, which showed an elegant necklace, and (in very small writing) the price they were charging for it. Then I looked at Zoë, in her scruffy T-shirt and slacks. 

"It looks really expensive," I said. "And you— well, to be honest, you don't." 

"Well, yes," Zoë said. "But I'm not going to buy anything. I just want to ask them a couple of questions about Ms Khan." 

"They'd throw us out." 

"Then we'd be in exactly the same situation that we are now, wouldn't we?" 

"They might call Ship Security and have us locked up. Zoë, you know we don't have any authority to go around asking questions." 

"Don't worry. I'll be very tactful." And before I could say anything else, she rang the doorbell. There was a pause just long enough for my heart to sink all the way into my boots, before the door swung open and a tall, spindly man with an elaborate waistcoat was looking down his nose at us. 

"Can I help you?" he asked. By the tone of his voice, he'd rather have had us thrown to sharks. 

"I hope so," Zoë said briskly. "If I asked you about someone who came here yesterday, would you be able to tell me anything about them? Or would that be confidential?" 

I hadn't thought his manner could get any stiffer, but it did. 

"It would be confidential, of course," he replied. 

"Thank you. Sorry to bother you." 

Not bothering with any polite commonplaces, the shopkeeper closed the door. 

"There you are," Zoë said. "That wasn't so difficult." 

"I suppose it could have been worse. For a moment I was afraid you were going to pretend to buy something." 

Zoë considered the idea. "Do you think it might work?" 

"Not now, it wouldn't." I looked back at the shop. "What were you going to ask him, if he'd been prepared to answer questions?" 

"Oh, just background, really. Did Ms Khan buy a new pair of earrings, or were they able to match the one she's lost?" 

"Or was she even there?" I suggested. 

Zoë waved her hand around the precinct. "There must be security cameras all over this place. If she lied about being here she'd get caught at once." She shrugged. "Never mind. It isn't actually any of my business, is it?" 

"Does that mean we can go back to that leather goods shop?" I asked hopefully. "You know the one. I want to have another look at that handbag." 

"How many handbags do you need, anyway?" Zoë shook her head. "Or shouldn't I ask?" 

We resumed our decidedly non-random exploration. This time, our wanderings brought us up a spiral staircase into a geodesic dome, which seemed to be occupied by several factory shops. Zoë marched from one stall to another, treating towels, paperweights, personalised pewter trinkets, scented candles, costume jewellery and skimpy polymer garments with the same scientific detachment. 

"It doesn't make any sense," she said, once we'd completed the circuit of the dome. 

"What doesn't?" 

"The report I read this morning said Dupont was last seen alive in this area. They couldn't trace him making any transactions, but that doesn't mean he didn't: he could have used a cryptopen, or even old-style cash. But why would he want to buy anything they're selling here? And if he did, why take the trouble to cover his tracks?" 

I tried to follow her thought processes. "Do you think he was here for some other reason? He wanted to meet someone?" 

"Maybe. Or..." Zoë looked around the dome. "Perhaps he just wanted to establish that he _was_ here yesterday evening." 

"Why would he want to? People don't go to places just to establish they were there." 

"Well, no, not as a rule. But last night it looks as if nearly everyone was doing that, one way and another." Zoë frowned. "There's something I'm not seeing here. Some sort of hidden variable." 

"Hidden what?" 

"It was a theory they came up with to explain quantum mechanics, back in the old days. The idea was that however weird the things were that you observed — you know, entangled particles and so on — there was a straightforward mechanism behind the scenes that explained it all." She shook her head. "Actually, I wish I hadn't made that analogy now, because no-one really believes in hidden variables any more. It turned out that reality really is that weird." 

"Sorry," I said. "You've lost me." 

Zoë gave me a try-to-keep-up look. "There ought to be a nice, elegant explanation for why everyone except Lord Claremoor and that secretary of his weren't there. But I can't find one. Tabitha was invited to a dinner, Ms Witana was called away on business, I had a date, you decided to go to that karaoke bar..." 

"Don't remind me." 

"...and Mr Dupont came here for a reason yet to be determined." She spread her hands. "Now what single event could cause all that?" 

"I don't see how it could." I decided to concentrate on the part I was reasonably sure about. "We weren't lured into going out or called away, were we? It was our own decision." 

"Certainly in your case," Zoë said. "In mine it's theoretically possible that Kirabo asked me out because he's part of the conspiracy or whatever's going on. But there's no necessity for that. It's more likely that whoever it was saw we were going out anyway and didn't put that part of their plan into effect." 

"Or maybe you're imagining things and it was just a coincidence," I said, and started walking back towards the staircase. 

"I don't like coincidences," Zoë grumbled, following me. 

*

When we got back to the Holiday Village, the first person we ran into was Ms Witana. She was in the corridor by the emergency exit, and I had a nasty feeling she was waiting for us. 

"Out and about, I see," she said. "Enjoying your holiday. Of course, some of us don't find it so easy to get away from our work." 

"We went shopping," I said, and held up my new handbag by way of proof. 

"I'll take your word for it." She seemed to put a slight emphasis on 'your', but I wasn't sure if I'd imagined it. 

"Did anything happen while we were out?" Zoë asked. 

"Not really. Those security men packed up all their equipment and went away, and someone came to replace that door." She nodded at the door. "If they've got any sense they'll keep an eye on it, just in case." 

"You think the killer may come back?" I said. 

Ms Witana looked me straight in the eye. "Your guess must be at least as good as mine." 

She stalked past us and away. Zoë gave me a baffled look, then shrugged, glanced over the door just to satisfy herself that it had indeed been replaced, and headed in the direction of the garden. 

It seemed as if everyone had been hanging around waiting for us. Ms Khan was in the garden, sitting on the same low wall that I'd used the night before. 

"Hi," she said. "Doing anything?" 

Zoë sat down on the wall beside her. "Nothing urgent. Why?" 

"Just thought you might like to talk, that's all." 

"I take it no-one's made an arrest?" I said, as we sat down beside Ms Khan. 

She shook her head. "No-one seems to have a clue what's going on. What have you been doing?" 

"Only shopping," I said, a little shamefacedly. But it still sounded better than admitting we'd been trying to trace her movements and interrogate her jeweller. 

"Don't sound so guilty." She patted me on the shoulder. "No reason why you shouldn't try to take your minds off things." 

I spread my hands. "If only it worked. Every time I close my eyes, I see— well, you can guess." 

"This may not be a comfort right now, but you'll get over it in time." 

"Thank you." I wondered whether she was speaking from personal experience. But before I could make up my mind to ask her that, she'd turned her attention to Zoë. "How are you managing?" 

"My emotional conditioning seems to be handling it." Zoë seemed to realise she was sounding less than enthusiastic. "Thank you for asking." 

"It must have come as a terrible shock to you." 

"Well, a surprise, certainly." Zoë paused, her expression almost one of defiance. "What about you?" 

"What about me?" Ms Khan repeated, sounding puzzled. 

"Well, you knew Mr Dupont. Better than we did, at least. Has it upset you?" 

"I didn't know him that well. And—" she shrugged. "You aren't the only one who's been conditioned." 

"The thing is, nobody seems terribly surprised." Zoë turned to me. "Haven't you noticed that, Lily?" 

I thought back. "I see what you mean. It's not as if anyone was expecting him to be murdered, but now that he has been... Do you think he was the kind of man to make enemies?" 

Ms Khan nodded. "You remember I said he liked knowing things? There are things it's dangerous to know." 

I cast my mind back. 

"You remember at the tea party, we were talking about that art theft in Luhansk?" I said. "And Ms Witana... well, she was dropping hints that there was more to it than met the eye. You don't suppose Mr Dupont knew something about it?" 

"He could well have gone there to find out," Zoë said. "If he managed to track down the thief... well, he could have turned him in for a reward." 

"Or not turned him in — for a reward," I suggested. 

"You mean blackmail." Ms Khan looked uneasy. "I don't think he'd have gone that far." 

Zoë leaned forward. "Can you be sure of that?" 

"If you mean, could I swear to it that he wouldn't..." She shook her head. 

"Well, it doesn't make a lot of difference at the moment." I could see Zoë's mind was racing off, exploring this new theory. "Even if he just collected information and didn't make use of it, that could make him a danger to all sorts of people. I wonder if anyone's looked through his effects? No, if he was any good he'd keep everything encrypted. And maybe have some kind of dead-man's switch arrangement so that if he died, the data would all be deleted. Or maybe published." 

"So if he did blackmail someone, he'd tell them that if they killed him their secret would be out," I said. 

Zoë nodded, looking pleased with her cleverness. "That's what I'd do, in that situation." 

"But somebody did kill him," Ms Khan pointed out. 

"Well, it was just a theory. I suppose we won't know if it's true unless people's guilty secrets start turning up everywhere. And that could happen at any time." 

"I see. Well, I mustn't keep you." 

She got to her feet, and in a few moments we were heading back to our respective rooms. Once we finally got to our room, Zoë wanted to check her mail straight away, but I persuaded her to eat first. The meal didn't detain her for long, and the moment she'd finished she was sitting at the comms panel, speed-reading another set of investigators' reports, courtesy of UNISYC. Most of them seemed to be routine, proving beyond doubt that everybody had been exactly where they said they'd been, and there was no possibility of the murder weapon having been concealed anywhere in the Holiday Village. 

"Now that's interesting," she said. 

"What is?" 

"This one about searching for the weapon. I didn't realise that Dupont was armed." 

"Was he?" I thought back to when we'd found the body. "Was it in his pocket or something?" 

"Under the body." 

"But if he had a gun, doesn't that mean he could have done it himself?" 

"No. It was an old-style revolver, not a blaster — and it hadn't been fired." 

Once more, I tried to reconstruct the scene in my mind. This time, Dupont left his quarters, and saw — someone. He drew his pistol, or maybe he was already carrying it, but before he could shoot, a bolt of orange fire struck him over the heart. He fell forward... 

"You know I said I didn't like coincidences?" Zoë said, suddenly. 

I looked up, startled out of my reverie. "Yes?" 

"Well, we've got another one. It just happened that there was a technician doing maintenance in this area on the night in question. He was renewing the waterproof coating in one of the accessways." 

"What's wrong with that?" 

"Nothing. But listen to this. If anyone did get in and out through the fire exit, they'd have had to come past him. Even if he was looking the other way, he'd have heard them. And they'd probably have trodden in his glue and left sticky footprints all over the place." 

"You're telling me no-one did come past him," I said. 

"Exactly." 

"Suppose they waited until he'd gone?" 

Zoë reread the message on her screen. "Maybe. The tech was there from half-past nine to half-past eleven, roughly, so whoever it was could have got in before then, hidden in the Holiday Village, and made their escape afterwards. But how would they know when he'd turn up and when he'd leave? The maintenance schedules aren't public information." 

"We're back to that thing you said before," I said. "They must have had an accomplice inside the Holiday Village to say when the coast was clear." 

"Or arrange for the coast to be clear." 

"And if they had an accomplice, they could hide in that person's room until Mr Dupont came. Zoë, it's got to be Lord Claremoor or his secretary, hasn't it? There wasn't anyone else here, and they'd know all the places you could hide someone." 

"Logically, it's got to be one of them. But it doesn't make sense. If they hired a killer to bump off Mr Dupont for whatever reason, they'd take care to be nowhere near the place, wouldn't they? Like everybody else." She half-smiled. "I'm probably over-thinking this. 'They aren't guilty because they were the only people who could have done it.' That's ridiculous." 

"Have you got a better theory?" I asked. 

Zoë shook her head. "No. But then, I'm not in charge of this investigation, and there's probably evidence that hasn't made it into these reports." She made to turn the comms panel off, then thought better of it. "That reminds me. These reports are numbered One, Two, Three and Five. What happened to number Four?" She flipped through various panels of information, quicker than I could follow. "It looks like it's still downloading... no, the bitrate's zero. There must be some sort of glitch. I'll come back to it later." 

"You're not going out this evening?" I asked. Zoë was wearing the same casual clothes she'd had on all day, and showed no signs of changing or otherwise getting dolled up. 

"I don't feel in the mood. And Kirabo's got some video call to make at 22:00 ship's time, so we wouldn't have got much time together anyway. And I'd like to see what's in that last report when it turns up." She shrugged. "What about you?" 

"I'm going out, if you don't mind being on your own." 

"Not in the least. Are you going to do any more karaoke?" 

I shook my head firmly. "Not if I can help it." 

"Pity." Zoë smiled. "I might have come just to watch you."


	6. Suspicion

Though I was dressed for a night out, my plans certainly didn't involve karaoke bars or dancing. I went to the first public comms booth I could find, called Kirabo, and arranged to meet him that evening, in the hostel where he and his friends were staying. I set out for there straight away, and timed how long it took me. I made it in thirteen minutes, but it would have been possible to do it in less. Say ten, if you ran and there weren't that many people using the glideway. 

Kirabo was waiting for me at the door of the room he was using. 

"Hi, Lily," he said. "Nice to see you again." He looked at me more closely. "Are you all right?" 

"Fine," I lied. In reality, I felt scared, guilty, sick. 

"Great. Come in." 

The room he led me into was a far cry from the suite I'd shared with Zoë; it was cheap and cheerful student accommodation, scattered with heaps of clothes and the remains of self-heating meals. The only light was artificial. I was pretty sure we were below the level of the main deck, somewhere in the bowels of the ship. 

"The other guys are here, like you asked," Kirabo continued. "You've met Shez and Milo?" 

I vaguely remembered them from when we'd originally met Kirabo; a couple of cute young men who'd made no secret of their feelings for each other. They were sitting on the edge of the double bed, hand in hand. 

"Hi," I said, trying to sound cheerful. 

"Nice to see you again," Shez or Milo — I couldn't remember which was which — said. He jumped to his feet, and cleared a space on a dilapidated- looking chair for me. "Excuse the mess. I'm afraid we're all typical students in that regard." 

"Don't worry." I pulled my courage together. "Listen, I wanted to talk about last night. You know." 

"You mean about the murder?" Kirabo nodded sympathetically. "Zoë told me you found the body. That must've been horrible for you." 

I nodded. "It was." 

"How are you two coping? Zoë seemed to be managing all right this morning." 

"I'm fine. Zoë—" I considered the matter. "She's frustrated, I think. She wants to try and find out who did the murder." 

"Why?" Milo or Shez asked. "She's not in the police, is she? I thought she said she was sort of researcher." 

Kirabo nodded. "That's right." 

"She can't resist an unsolved problem," I said. "Anyway, I came to ask. Was she with you all evening?" 

"Oh, definitely. We all met at seven, and we were together all the time. That's right, isn't it, Shez?" 

"I suppose so," Shez said. He was the blonder of the two, I noted, for future reference. "Until we got back here, and then — well, Milo and I wanted some time to ourselves." 

"I don't think we were the only ones," Milo added, with a grin. "We went back to our room and left them to it." 

I turned back to Kirabo. "Look, I'm sorry I've got to ask you this. I know it's none of my business what happened. But I need to know what time Zoë left that evening." 

"I know." He took a deep breath. "It's like this. Zoë and I went to bed together. Afterwards, I went to sleep. I think she did, too. Anyway, the next thing I knew was when she was climbing out of the bed. She said she was late, she'd promised to get back to you." 

"Did you notice what time that was?" 

"Quarter to midnight. At least, that's what she said. I didn't check. I was still drowsy." 

"You don't think she could have gone out earlier, and come back?" 

He shook his head. "She'd have woken me, I'm sure." 

I felt my heart sink further. There was no reason to think that Zoë had left Kirabo earlier than she said — but there was no proof she hadn't. And even if she had left at a quarter to midnight, did those fifteen minutes give her enough time to get back to the Holiday Village, commit the murder, dispose of the weapon somehow, and then forget she'd done it? That didn't match the medical evidence — but then, I only had Zoë's word, and she only had UNISYC's, for what the medical evidence even was. 

"Lily, what's wrong?" Kirabo was leaning over me, his hands on my shoulders. "Why do you think Zoë's got anything to do with this?" 

I shook my head. "I'm sorry. I don't have any reason. It's just... someone put the idea into my head that she might be involved, and now I can't get it out again. I just want this whole thing to be over." 

"Sounds like you're having a rough time," Milo said sympathetically. "If there's anything we can do...?" 

"Thanks, but—" I began. Before I could get any further, the comms panel beeped. Shez jumped up, and answered the call. Zoë appeared on the screen. As far as I could tell she looked normal, but it was hard to be sure because the image wasn't stable. Bands of interference moved across it from time to time, and occasionally it would freeze for a few seconds. 

"Hi," she began. "That's Shez, isn't it? You don't happen to know— Oh. Lily. There you are." 

I crossed to the panel. "Yes," I said. I felt terribly guilty; I'd been talking to Zoë's friends behind her back, and she'd caught me at it. But there wasn't any difference in her manner. 

"I suppose you're checking my alibi?" she said. "That's very thorough of you. I wouldn't have expected you to think of it." 

"You don't mind?" 

Zoë shrugged. "Why should I? I don't have anything to hide." She seemed to realise that I wasn't the only person listening, and added "From any of you. You should have told someone where you were going, though, or left a note." 

"Slapped wrists for Lily," Kirabo said, with a grin. He'd joined Shez and me at the comm panel. 

"Anyway," Zoë continued. "I hope you're satisfied that—" She suddenly broke off, and looked to one side. "Hang on a minute." 

She disappeared off the screen. A moment later, she reappeared. Her face looked paler, and that wasn't anything to do with the interference that was still rolling past. 

"Lily," she said, "there's someone outside the door." I tried to speak, but she kept on talking. "They've disabled the door camera: I can't see who it is. That can't be a good sign. Don't come back here. It's not safe. Find a room somewhere else. You'll have to get in touch with you-know-who; I can't get through to them. You know the drill." She looked around and gasped. 

"Zoë!" Kirabo was leaning forward. "What's happening?" 

"There's someone burning through the door," Zoë said, sounding utterly emotionless. "It's got to be whoever killed Dupont — I must have stumbled across something that's dangerous to them, and now they're after me. The same modus operandi. Keep watching. You may get a look at them and recognise who it is." 

"Zoë, I—" Kirabo and I began at the same moment. 

I don't know how either of us would have finished that sentence, but we didn't even get the chance. Zoë jumped to her feet, overturning her chair, stared at something out of the field of vision, and began to scream. I'd never seen her freak out like that before; it was as if all her self-control had collapsed at once. Then the picture froze, and for several seconds all the screen showed was the still image of Zoë, her fists clenched, her eyes tightly shut, and her mouth open mid-scream. 

That image stayed with me even after the screen blanked, and displayed the message CONNECTION LOST.


	7. Where is Zoë Heriot?

For a moment or two, we all sat there staring in horror at the blank screen. Then Kirabo dived at the controls and tried to call back. He tried several times, but all he got was a SERVICE UNAVAILABLE message. Then he called Ship Security. It took several more attempts before he got through, and when he could reach an officer, the connection was just as bad as when we'd spoken to Zoë. The man took our details, and told us to stay where we were: somebody would be in touch. 

If I'd felt sick and worried before, it was ten times worse now. We sat around, not daring to speak or even look at each other's faces. At about five to ten, Kirabo reminded us that he needed to make a video call, and the other three of us crossed the corridor to the room that Shez and Milo shared. It wasn't any tidier. But before we'd been there any length of time, Kirabo stuck his head round the door and said we could come back. He hadn't been able to make his call; it seemed that all comms to the outside world were down. I remembered Zoë had said she hadn't been able to get a call out, either. 

It was over an hour before Senior Investigator Holmberg, in person, knocked at Kirabo's door. 

"What's happened to Zoë?" I asked, without preliminary. "Is she..." 

"Doctor Heriot has disappeared," he replied. "We found no trace of her, dead or alive." 

"But was there any—" I swallowed. "Any blood, or something like that?" 

"No. No signs of a struggle." 

"She was terrified," Kirabo said. "If someone had grabbed her, I don't think she would have struggled." 

"But can't you trace her?" I asked. "Who did this?" 

"We're searching for her now. As for who did it, the presumption is that it is connected with Martin Dupont's murder. Can you think of any reason why the two might be connected?" 

"I don't know," I said weakly. "I'm sure he didn't know her, or the other way round." 

"You said, earlier, she wanted to solve the murder herself," Shez said. "Do you think she found out something that made her a danger to the murderer?" 

"I can't think what that could be." I tried to think back over the day. "We talked to some of the other residents about the murder, but that's only natural." 

"That's all?" 

I wasn't sure what to say about our visit to Oakland Court Market. Yes, we'd gone there looking for clues, but if I told Holmberg about it, he'd ask why we went, and then I'd have to tell him about Zoë reading copies of his reports, and where she got them. Or make something up, and I didn't feel I could manage a convincing lie just now. 

"That's all," I said. 

Holmberg nodded. "Your suite's been sealed off as a crime scene," he said. "You'll have to find somewhere else for the night. I'll take a formal statement from you in the morning. Do you have any questions?" 

Milo put up his hand. "Yes: Do you know what's wrong with the communication systems?" 

"I can't say," Holmberg replied. Which was, of course, no answer at all. "If that's all?" 

No-one else had a question for him, and he left us to it. 

"Now what do I do?" I asked. 

"You'll have to stay the night here," Kirabo said. "You can't go back to that Holiday Village." 

"What, here?" I looked around the cluttered, untidy room. "But—" 

"I don't mean share the bed," he added hastily. "I'll take the chair, or make up a bed on the floor, or something." 

I yawned. "Thanks," I said, and leaned back in the chair. My eyelids felt frightfully heavy. 

*

I felt dreadful the next morning — and after spending the night in that chair, sleeping in my clothes, I'm sure I looked dreadful too. Even the weather had taken a turn for the worse: when I went up on deck there was cloud from horizon to horizon, and the deck was wet with rain. As soon as I'd got myself sorted out, I tried to call UNISYC, but communications were still down. I'd hoped I could just get hold of them and they'd send someone to sort things out, but it was plain I was on my own. 

After breakfast a couple of junior security officers showed up to take all our statements and review the footage of our last conversation with Zoë. They did ask me (which I'd hoped they wouldn't) what Zoë had meant by getting in touch with 'you-know-who'; I stalled and said I wasn't sure. Once they'd finished getting everything recorded and resolved, they escorted me back to the Holiday Village, with assurances that they'd be around to protect me. Kirabo came too, though they wouldn't let him come into the Holiday Village itself. 

The suite I'd shared with Zoë was pretty much as we'd left it, except for the hole melted in the door and the overturned chair where she'd jumped to her feet. I packed a few days' clothes and so on in a bag, and got out of there as quickly as I could. 

"What was it like in there?" Kirabo asked, as we walked back to the glideway terminal. The operatives watching us had dropped back a few paces, to give us a little privacy. 

I shrugged. "Just like it was the last time I was there. It doesn't look as if anything was touched. Whoever they were, they just... came, took Zoë, and went again." 

"They can't just have gone. Someone must have seen them." 

"But if someone did, surely we'd have been told. One way or —" I broke off, because it was taking everything I had not to collapse in a sobbing heap. It was worse than when I'd been answering questions, because at least then I'd had something to take my mind off things. 

"Don't worry, Lily. They'll find her." I wasn't sure whether Kirabo was trying to convince himself or me, but the sentiment did seem to help a little. 

"I suppose I ought to be looking for somewhere to stay," I said. "But I can't think properly... shouldn't we have got off at the last stop?" 

"Yeah, it was." Kirabo shrugged. "I didn't notice either. Looks like I need to get my head together, too." 

For want of any better idea, we rode the glideway all the way to the bow, and then took the steps up to the observation deck. I'd expected it to be crowded, but there were only a few people there, mostly couples taking it in turns to photograph each other standing with their arms spread in the wind, or with the superstructure of the ship looming behind them. As well as the railings, there were force fields to keep some of the wind off, but it was still chilly. The sky ahead of us looked positively threatening. 

We sat down on a bench, as far away from the other visitors as we could get, and remained there for a good long while. 

"Lily," Kirabo said suddenly. "How well do you know Zoë?" 

The previous time I'd been asked that question, I'd had all sorts of reasons to answer cautiously. Now, none of them seemed to matter, and anyway I didn't feel up to coming up with any sort of lie. 

"Not as well as I'd like," I said. "She's very focused. When we go on holiday together, that's what she concentrates on. She doesn't talk much about her family or her work or anything like that. Why?" 

"Focused," he repeated. "That's a good word for her. When we were together it was like I was the only other person in the room. How do you think she'd be at keeping a secret?" 

I spread my hands. "She wouldn't gossip. But if I knew she knew something, I could have a good go at getting it out of her. She's not a good liar, you see." 

"But what if you didn't know she knew?" 

"Then... I don't know." I managed a weak smile. 

"You're sure she isn't mixed up with anything — you know, dodgy?" 

"She's not that sort of person." 

He didn't look convinced, as well he mightn't. "I hope you're right." 

Unpleasant as the weather was, we didn't get back to Kirabo's room until the afternoon. On the way back, we'd stopped to eat in a mycoprotein restaurant. Half the items on the menu were marked as unavailable — it seemed that with communications still down, there was no way to beam in supplies of food, and they were trying to make what they had last as long as possible. 

Once we did get back to Kirabo's, I just huddled in a chair and shivered. Looking back, there were all sorts of things I should have been doing. At the very least, I ought to have arranged somewhere else to stay, instead of imposing on Kirabo and his friends. And then, I suppose, I should have gone back to the scene of the crime and left no stone unturned until I found the vital clue that would solve Mr Dupont's murder and Zoë's kidnapping. 

In the event, I was still sitting there, gazing blankly into space, when there was a whoosh of compressed air and something rattled into the mail-tube receiver. Kirabo hurried across, opened the receiver, and pulled out an envelope. I didn't pay much attention, until he came over to me and said "Look at this." 

I looked. He was holding a padded envelope, addressed to him in neat computer printing. He'd opened it; all it contained was a second envelope, with a similar label that had my name on it. 

"Why would someone send me something for you?" he said, handing the inner envelope to me. "Who knows you're staying here?" 

"Only Security," I said. "And you and your friends. And..." 

"And who?" 

"Maybe whoever kidnapped Zoë, if she told them." 

Kirabo nodded. "Do you think it could be a ransom note?" 

"I don't know." 

Thinking about it in hindsight, I probably ought to have taken the envelope to Ship Security and let them open it. But at the time, the idea didn't even occur to me; I tore the envelope open. Inside was a white tablet, about the size of my hand, half a centimetre thick, and vaguely leathery to the touch. 

"What the..." Kirabo looked over my shoulder. "What is that thing?" 

"I've no idea," I said. "I've never seen anything like it." 

I looked down at the thing again. Before, it had been blank. Now, words were visible on its surface, in a dark purple colour. 

LILY, IS THAT YOU? they read. The handwriting was Zoë's. 

Kirabo and I looked at each other, hardly daring to hope. 

"Yes, it's me!" I said. "Zoë, where are you? Are you all right? What happened?" 

The message on the pad faded, and was replaced with another. It didn't appear all at once; rather, you could see the letters being written, as if she was there with us, writing with an invisible pen. 

IF YOU'RE THERE, WRITE ON THIS PAD. 

"Have you got a pen?" I asked Kirabo. "Or a stylus or something?" 

"Somewhere." He rooted around in one of his bags until he came back with a pencil. "Will this do?" 

"Let's try." I took the pencil and wrote IM HERE on the pad. The pencil marks started off faint, but rapidly darkened to the same purple that Zoë's messages — if they were Zoë's — were written in. I wanted to write more, but before I could, her writing began to appear on the pad again. 

IS THERE ANYBODY ELSE WITH YOU? it said. 

Kirabo took the pencil, and wrote his own name. 

RIGHT. There was a pause, as if Zoë was thinking; then the writing resumed. LILY, YOU NEED TO GO TO THE FOUNTAIN. YOU KNOW, WHERE WE FOUND THE BODY. MAKE SURE YOU'RE ALONE AND DON'T TELL ANYONE ELSE. GET THERE FOR 1600 PRECISELY. WEAR SWIMSUIT AND GOGGLES. There was another pause, and then she added BRING MY SWIMSUIT TOO. 

I read and reread the instructions, and wrote BUT. Before I could get any further, a line crossed it out, and Zoë's writing resumed. 

DON'T ARGUE. PLEASE. I NEED YOU TO DO THIS. AND DON'T TELL ANYONE ELSE, EITHER OF YOU. THIS MUSTN'T GET OUT. NOT A WORD, OR YOU'LL BE ENDANGERING THOUSANDS OF LIVES. PROMISE YOU'LL KEEP IT TO YOURSELVES. 

I wrote PROMISE, and handed the pencil to Kirabo, who wrote a PROMISE of his own. 

OK. THIS MESSAGE WILL SELF DESTRUCT. PUT IT IN A SINK OR SOMETHING. 

WAIT, I wrote. There was no answer. Kirabo and I exchanged glances; then he took the tablet and set it down cautiously in his handbasin. As soon as he let go of it, it disintegrated into a puddle of steaming purple goo. 

"OK," he said, looking down at the mess. "What's really going on here?" 

"What do you mean?" I asked. 

"You're not just a couple of girls on holiday," he said flatly. "Look at you. Zoë's gone missing and now she's sending you secret messages and telling you to meet her and not tell anyone. 'Thousands of lives'. If she means that..." 

"She does. I mean, she wouldn't lie about something like that." 

Another thought seemed to strike Kirabo. "Those investigators this morning were asking about that person Zoë was talking about. 'You-know-who'. Who is that?" 

I took a deep breath and let it out. "I can't tell you. Really. Not without asking Zoë first." 

"That's a lot of help," Kirabo said. "You don't even know she's still alive. That handwriting could be fake." 

"I know," I said. "But it's a risk I've got to take." 

He shook his head. "You know what we should do. Tell Holmberg what we saw." 

I looked at the melted tablet in the sink. "We haven't got any evidence. And... Zoë said we mustn't, and I trust her." 

He shook his head. "I don't know what all this is about, and I don't want to. I just hope you don't both get yourselves killed."


	8. Hidden Depths

Given how emphatic Zoë had been about not bringing anybody, it certainly wouldn't have done to show up with a couple of bodyguards. Either I'd have had to convince them they weren't wanted, or give them the slip. In the end, it was easier to get away from them; they weren't expecting me to give them any trouble. When I set out, ostensibly to buy a few necessary bits and pieces at Oakland Court, I was wearing two layers of clothes over the top of my swimsuit. The market was crowded enough that I got away from my protectors almost at once. Doubtless they'd have picked me up eventually, but before they could I'd managed to leave my top layer of clothes in a lavatory cubicle, and put on a sunhat and dark glasses. Then I walked to the Holiday Village — using the glideway was out of the question, they'd have been sure to trace me at one or other terminal. It was raining quite hard now, but I was able to make most of the journey under cover. 

I got to the Holiday Village in good time, which gave me a fresh cause to worry — if the people who'd been guarding me happened to guess where I was headed, they'd come looking for me. I didn't dare go to our room, in case that was being monitored, so instead I went up to the little chamber lined with seashells and discarded my remaining clothes there. Nobody came looking for me, and at 1600 precisely, I walked back down the stairs. I felt mainly terrified, with a bit of 'awkward' and 'self-conscious' thrown in for good measure. 

The garden was empty, which was somehow scarier than if there'd been a group of armed men waiting for me. I crossed to the fountain, and sat down. If the message was genuine, something ought to be happening about... 

"Lily!" 

I looked around, startled. Zoë had appeared in the basin of the fountain, with only her head and bare shoulders visible above the surface of the water. Her eyes were covered with odd-looking convex discs, presumably some sort of swimming goggles. 

"Did you bring a swimsuit for me?" she asked, without preliminary. 

"What—" I began. 

"Did you?" 

I shook my head dully. 

"Then go and get it, quickly." I hesitated, and she added "I'm not wearing anything at the moment. That's why I need the costume." 

"But what about— won't someone see—" 

She shook her head impatiently. "The cameras are offline. There's enough time if you hurry." 

I more or less ran to our room, dug out Zoë's swimsuit, and hurried back down. I'd half expected Zoë to be gone, but she was still where I'd left her, somehow neck-deep in a fountain that looked as if it would barely reach her knees. 

I gave her the swimsuit, and turned away. There was a certain amount of splashing, and then Zoë said "You can look now." 

I turned back, to see that she was now sitting on the edge of the fountain, wearing the swimsuit. She had two fist-sized dark green blobs, one in each hand, and was holding one out to me. 

"Put this in your mouth," she said. "The end with the pipe. It's so you can breathe underwater." 

I took the blob from her. It was rubbery to the touch, roughly the size of an apple, but more irregular in shape. At one end a tube, made of the same substance, protruded a few centimetres. With trepidation, I put the tube in my mouth; it tasted something like cloves. Where the tube was touching my lips, it softened, moulding itself to the contours of my face. 

"You can let go of it," Zoë said. "It'll stay there. Now put your goggles on and follow me, as quick as you can." 

She put the other blob in her own mouth, sat down in the water (not without a shiver), and and disappeared below the surface. I pulled my goggles on, plucked up my courage, and stepped into the fountain. The water didn't even reach my knees, and it was decidedly chilly. I shuffled forward, trying to find the place where Zoë had appeared and disappeared. There must be a hole in the bottom of the basin... yes, here it was. Even more reluctantly, I lowered myself into it, feet-first. 

I'd reached about waist-deep, I suppose, when a hand grabbed my ankle and pulled me under. The light from above was cut off, as the trapdoor or whatever it was in the base of the fountain slid shut, and I was left struggling in the darkness. I was still breathing air, not water, so the thing in my mouth seemed to be doing its job, but I still felt as if I was choking. 

Slowly, light returned: a greenish-yellow glow, from somewhere behind me. Once I had better control of myself, I looked around. I was floating near the top of a water-filled chamber, not much bigger than the fountain above, with a padded, rounded look to its walls. Above me was a circular pipe, big enough to swim through, which presumably was how I'd got here. The light was coming from a hemisphere that was stuck to the ceiling, or perhaps embedded in it. 

Lower down in the water, and still holding onto my ankle, was Zoë. Her left hand was resting on a lumpy protrusion from the wall that looked as if it was made of cloudy glass. We couldn't talk, but she let go of me, gave me a thumbs-up sign, and swam downward. At the bottom of the chamber were several circular doors, about the same size as the pipe I'd come down, and one of them had swung open. Zoë dived through it and was gone. I had no choice but to follow her. 

The journey that followed was scary, claustrophobic and cold. We swam through a network of pipes, most of which were dark except for the occasional greenish light. I couldn't work out if we were heading anywhere in particular; there seemed to be no system to the direction that we were heading in, except that we were going downwards. Once or twice, I had the distinct impression that we weren't alone — just a flash of movement in my peripheral vision, nothing more. 

Long after I'd lost track of where we were, we arrived in another cylindrical chamber, with another of the rounded, glassy lumps on the wall. Zoë squeezed this with her hand; the tunnel by which we'd entered slid closed. Then the water began to drain out of the room, and before long we were standing on the floor. 

Once the water level had fallen below head height, Zoë reached up to the bulb in her mouth and squeezed it. It came away. I copied her. The air in the room was warm, pleasantly so after the coldness of the water we'd been swimming in. With her free hand, she removed the lenses from her eyes; I pushed my goggles up. 

"Thanks for bringing the costume, by the way," Zoë said, as the water sank below the level of her chest. "Otherwise things might be getting a bit awkward now." 

"My pleasure," I said, rather shakily. 

"You see, when they brought me here, they took me through all those pipes fully-dressed. It was pretty hard going, and then I had to sit around for ages waiting for my clothes to dry again. So when they told me I had to... well, anyway, I thought the swimsuit would be a good idea." 

"Wait a moment. What do you mean, 'they' brought you here? Do you mean the people who broke into your room?" I couldn't help remembering that final freeze-frame of Zoë's terrified expression. "What did they do to you? And where is this place, anyway?" 

The last of the water drained away from round our feet. At the far side of the chamber from where we'd come in, a door began to slide open. 

"There isn't time to explain," Zoë said. "Just hope." 

"Hope?" 

"That this turns out all right." 

She took my hand in hers, and we stood side by side as the door opened, revealing something I couldn't recognise at all. It looked like a statue, seven feet high, made of a similar green material to the breathing device I still had in my hand, and draped in some kind of silvery oilcloth. At first I thought it was supposed to be of a person, but the proportions were all wrong, far too slender and streamlined. And instead of a proper head, it had a long neck topped by something that looked as if the sculptor had used a giant turtle for his model. It had a lipless, almost beaklike mouth, and two huge eyes. 

Then I realised that the eyes were looking at me. It wasn't a statue. It was a creature. Some sort of alien. It advanced a step; I tried to back away, but my legs didn't seem to be working properly. There was a buzzing in my ears and my vision was going blurry; somehow, I was on the floor, looking up at Zoë and the creature as they leaned over me.


	9. Objects of Study

A group of us were half-wading, half-swimming, through a swamp. Huge trees loomed above us, their tangled roots standing clear of the water. Large, placid-looking lizards heaved themselves out of our way. Overhead, ungainly creatures half-flew, half-jumped from one tree to another, flapping their webbed wings desperately to avoid falling. Somewhere in the distance, we could hear the roar of some wild beast, and the scream of whatever it was eating. 

Ahead of us, and behind us, the black, slime-streaked waters of the swamp parted. The serpent-men had been lying in wait for us — now, we were trapped, with no escape— 

Someone slapped me on the cheek. 

"Lily?" 

There was a damp, resilient floor under me, and Zoë's other hand was shaking me by the shoulder. 

"Lily? Can you hear me?" 

"Yes," I managed to answer, and tried to sit up. The creature was still there — that, at least, had been real. But the same creatures had been in the dream, or vision, or whatever I'd just been through. I'd recognised them, somehow, as serpent-men. 

"Can you walk?" Zoë asked. 

"I don't know." I tried to stand, but my legs still felt like rubber. "What just happened? I was in a jungle— no, it was a swamp—" 

"I'm not sure." Zoë pulled me to my feet. "But something similar happened to me the first time, too. I was hysterical. Well, you probably saw." 

"Zoë, what's going on? And what are these..." I gestured vaguely at the tall, green figure standing patiently by the exit. "Aliens?" 

"Sorry, but there still isn't time to explain. Come along." 

She half-led, half-dragged me into a dark corridor, with the serpent-man, if that was what it was, bringing up the rear. At the far end of the corridor, another door slid open, and we emerged into a larger space. There were half-a-dozen or so of the creatures waiting for us, standing around a large table. There were variations in their colour, greens and browns and greys, and in the robes they were wearing. The air was warm and moist. 

Zoë stopped before one of the creatures, who was wearing a circlet on its head. 

"I've brought her," she said. She looked pale, and that wasn't just down to the green light. "This is Lily Carson." 

"Good," the creature replied. Its voice sounded hoarse, barely more than a whisper. "Lilycarson, step forward." 

I looked at Zoë again. Her face was set, devoid of emotion, and it seemed to be all she could do to nod at me. I took two hesitant steps forward. 

"Face away from me." 

I turned, and jumped, as a webbed hand was placed on my head. The room began to swirl before my eyes. It was as if the hand was reaching through my skull and clawing at my brain. 

"Her mind is suitable," the creature's voice said, somewhere behind and above me. 

"What?" I tried to break free, but found I couldn't move. "Zoë, what's happening?" 

"They told me I had to," Zoë said, her voice tight and controlled. "I had to get you here. Or they'd..." 

If Zoë did say what they'd threatened to do, I didn't hear it. Her mouth was moving, but there was suddenly a roaring in my ears, as if I'd been plunged deep underwater. Then the creature gripping my head let go, and I staggered forward. Zoë darted forward to catch me, but I managed to stay upright. The aliens were all around us, peering at us, making complicated hissing, bubbling noises. Two of them took me by the arms; two more took hold of Zoë. 

"Wait!" Zoë called. "I brought Lily. I did what you said! You said you wouldn't hurt her!" 

"We will not," the alien with the circlet hissed. "Do not resist." 

We didn't, not that it would have mattered. We were marched away, through more rooms and tunnels. Everything was curved, out of proportion, damp to the touch. After a while, the creatures leading us stopped at a doorway. The two holding Zoë pushed her through it. Then I was brought forward. 

"Please," I said. "Can I ask... who are you? What planet do you come from?" 

They didn't answer, just pushed me through the same doorway. The room beyond was no better lit than the rest of this shadowy maze, but even in the dim light I could tell it wasn't spacious. I turned back, to see one of the creatures standing just outside the doorway, its hand out of my field of vision. 

"This is our planet," it hissed. 

It moved its hand. A moving panel, as dark as the wall, sealed off the doorway with a damp, organic _thud_. 

*

For a moment I stood there, in the darkness. Then lights came on, somewhere near the ceiling, dim at first, but quickly brightening. I looked around, and got another surprise. There was no way round the fact that we were in a cell, but whoever had furnished it seemed to have wanted to make us feel at home. There were two mattresses on the floor that could have come from Oakland Court Market, and each had a neatly-rolled sleeping bag on top of it. Zoë's clothes were hanging from a rack in one corner, and in another was a stack of self-heating food tins that still had their price labels. Maybe 'cell' was the wrong word after all. Perhaps 'cage' was closer. Somewhere that biological specimens were kept, in conditions as close as possible to their native environment. 

"Zoë," I said. 

Zoë's face still had that set expression, and she wouldn't look me in the eye. "Yes?" 

"You kept saying there wasn't time to explain. Well, now there is." 

"All right." Zoë opened a chest that stood against one wall, and pulled out two towels. She handed one to me, and started drying herself with the other. "I was talking to you last night when they burned their way through my door. I had... an emotional reaction." 

"I'd call it screaming abdabs," I said. 

"Yes." Her voice was still unnaturally calm and detached, and she was speaking quite slowly, as if she was planning out what to say in each sentence. "I think these creatures must have some kind of psychic effect on us. You didn't see them at that point, did you? They said you hadn't." 

"The screen cut out." 

"Well, I had a hallucination of some kind. I thought I was on a beach, fishing in a rock pool, and they came up out of the water all around me—" She shuddered, and for a moment she looked right at me, with fear in her eyes. "When I stopped hallucinating I was in the fountain. They made me wear those eye things and a breather, and brought me here. I couldn't stop them. 

"Then they tried to get into my mind, like they did with you, but it didn't work. I don't know why. Maybe their technique only works on certain people, or perhaps it's something to do with all the other things that I've had done to my brain. So they said they needed another human. Someone I could trust. So I thought of you." By now she was sitting on her mattress, hugging her knees, still with the towel wrapped around her. "Sorry." 

"And so they sent me that tablet thing." 

"Yes. There were two of them standing there while I was writing. They said I had to make sure you came on your own. Otherwise they'd—" She fell silent. 

I felt I had to ask. "What did they say they'd do?" 

"'Take appropriate measures'. That could be anything. But I got the impression that they might involve killing someone. Maybe me." 

"But what do they want you — or me — for?" 

"I don't know." Zoë shivered. "Have you noticed the temperature and humidity in this room are adjusted for us, not them? And the light levels. They've constructed a custom habitat for us." 

"That's what I thought just now," I said. "A cage. As if we're specimens." 

"But not a breeding pair." Zoë managed a faint smile. "They could have had one, if they'd wanted. Whatever they want us for, it isn't that." 

I looked around the room again. "They've been studying humanity. I mean, they know what we eat and how we sleep and so on. Do you think they want to find out something else?" 

"It's possible. And another thing: they must have human agents somewhere on the ship. It's not as if they could just have walked into a shop and bought all this themselves. Or delivered that tablet to you." She fell silent briefly. "Well, I think I know why You-Know-Who sent us here, now." 

"You think they knew about the serpent-men?" 

"I think they knew there was something here. 'Serpent-men'. How did you come up with that name for them?" 

I shook my head. "I don't know. It just seemed to be the right name for them. Why?" 

"Because that's what my mind thinks they're called, too. As if I recognised them. But how can either of us..." She trailed off. "Lily, can you forgive me?" 

"What for?" 

"Sending you that tablet. Tricking you into coming here when you could have been safe in bed. I mean, I could say the serpent-men tricked me, or they talked me into it, but—" She sighed. "I think I've got to take some of the blame." 

"Don't blame yourself," I said. "If you hadn't got hold of me you'd still be all alone down here. That must have been horrible for you. And I think I'd sleep better here than on Kirabo's chair." 

"You don't mind?" 

I was on the point of saying "No," but found I couldn't. "Well, I do, a bit. You remember saying you didn't like other people treating you as nothing more than a tool?" 

"Of course." 

"Well, try not to get into that habit yourself." 

"Oh." Zoë fell silent for a while, then rose to her feet and hung the towel up to dry. "I suppose we'd better keep our strength up." 

"I don't feel very hungry." 

"Neither do I, but we need to make the effort. Do you think you could manage any of these?" 

I crossed to the stack of cans, and looked at the nearest one. "It says 'steak or chicken.'" 

"I hope that doesn't mean it's in a quantum superposition until you open the tin," Zoë said.


	10. Triangulation

It was, as far as we could tell, the morning after we'd been put in the cell. It was pretty clear that we were under observation: the lights had been turned down when we got into our sleeping bags, and up again when we made it clear we were getting up. As usual when Zoë and I shared a room, neither of us had slept particularly well, though her tendency to nightmares wasn't anything new to me. 

After breakfast, we waited to see if our captors had any plans for us, and chatted — more to stave off boredom than from any hope that we might think of anything useful. 

"Where do you think we are?" I said, after a while. "I suppose we're still somewhere on the _Liberty_ — I didn't notice them beaming us up to their spaceship or anything." 

Zoë nodded. "I agree: we're most likely still on board. Somewhere down in the hull, I should think." She put her fingers to her temples. "The engineering section's the most likely." 

"But surely someone would notice? I mean, even if there was part of the ship that wasn't being used, you couldn't just have aliens move in and take it over. Someone would notice." 

"This ship's pretty big, and pretty old. There must be all sorts of subsystems that aren't used any more. Maybe places that you aren't supposed to go because they're contaminated. Decontaminate one, and there you are." 

"Yes..." I thought about it. "Perhaps it was when this ship was being run by a crime syndicate, and the serpent-men made a deal with one of the bosses. He'd have kept them secret from his rivals, and found them somewhere to hide. Then he got killed before anyone else found out about it." 

"All those syndicates got shut down by the police, in the end. Wouldn't the police have done a full search of the ship?" 

"Nobody's perfect." 

Zoë looked as if she was about to offer herself up as a counterexample to that last thought. But before she could, the lights dimmed and the door slid open. Outside, the tall, slender silhouettes of two serpent-men sent a chill down my spine. 

"Come with us," one of them whispered. 

We were taken to the large room again, the one where I'd been interrogated before. This time there were only two other serpent-men present: the one in the circlet, who I supposed was their leader, and a shorter, dark grey one carrying a translucent container. I wasn't sure, but it looked as if the contents were slowly moving. 

Our guards came to a halt, and held a brief conversation in their language with their leader. We were pushed forward, and our hands were pressed onto the top of a waist-high pillar. I tried to pull away, and found I couldn't: my hands were stuck fast. Zoë and I exchanged glances, then looked up at the serpent-men's leader. 

"You will do as we instruct you," the creature said. 

Zoë looked as defiant as someone can when they're bent over forward and stuck to a pillar. "Why?" 

One of the leader's huge eyes fixed itself on Zoë. "If one of you disobeys, the other one will suffer." 

I don't think we'd have considered the threat an idle one, even without the brief sensation of burning that swept over our bodies. 

"You will take the devices we give to you. You will place them at locations we specify. Do you understand?" 

"Yes," I said. 

"What do they do?" Zoë asked. I felt myself cowering slightly, ready for the wave of pain, but it didn't come. "How do I know they won't sink the ship or..." 

I didn't catch the rest of her sentence, because the sensation of burning was back. I gritted my teeth and tried not to show it, but my legs wouldn't hold me up, and I fell to my knees, tears rolling down my face. 

"Do you value your fellow human so little?" the leader was asking Zoë. 

"You're asking me to decide between hurting Lily or killing everyone on this ship," Zoë said, her voice shaking a little. "There's only one logical course of action." 

The serpent-men briefly conferred among themselves. 

"We could destroy this vessel if we chose to," the leader said. "We do not choose to. The devices are not for this purpose." 

"Then what _are_ they for?" Zoë asked, exasperation creeping into her voice. 

"We require to..." The leader broke off and exchanged a few sentences with the smaller, grey serpent-man. "To trace a signal. By searching from three places." 

"You mean triangulation!" 

"Triangulation," the leader repeated. The other appeared to make a note of the word, doubtless adding it to their dictionary of human vocabulary. "Will you place the devices as we direct?" 

"I..." Zoë nodded slowly. "I will." 

"I will," I repeated. 

The leader gestured to his— her?— subordinates. "Your appearance must be altered." 

The leader's assistant and the two guards closed in on Zoë. I heard a gasp from her, and a sharp yelp of pain, followed by a number of scuffling noises. Then they were on me. Something pricked my arm, and liquid was poured over my head and rubbed into my hair. An aching sensation spread over my body from the pinprick — not the burning pain that their torture device had inflicted on me, but unpleasant nonetheless. Concentrating on keeping upright, I looked across at Zoë, and was confronted by a complete stranger. 

Zoë's swimsuit hadn't changed, and her height and build were still the same, but in other respects I wouldn't have known her. Her hair was curly, her skin dark, and even the shape of her face had changed. Her eyes widened as they met mine, and I realised that I must have undergone a similar transformation. It was obvious that even if we were picked up by a security camera, no facial recognition software in the world would recognise us for who we really were. 

We weren't given any time to gawp at each other. In minutes, we were on our way out of the base, our swimsuits supplemented by flipflops, sunglasses and handbags, to all appearances no different from perfectly ordinary holidaymakers. But just to make sure we knew where we stood, we were told that we would be under constant observation, and any hint of disobedience would be punished. 

The guards didn't take us to the same airlock we'd used before. Instead, we were led down a different passage, and let out through a larger and more elaborate chamber. We stepped out into one of the ship's corridors, bare and functional. The outer door of the airlock closed behind us, with a dull thud. As we watched, rust — or the appearance of rust — crept over its surface. Within less than a minute, it looked as if it had been sealed for years. 

"I think I need to apologise again," Zoë said. Even with the new face the serpent-men had given her, it wasn't hard to see that she was close to tears. "They hurt you and it's my fault." 

"It wasn't your fault," I said. Unoriginal, but I wasn't in any condition for original thought. "Those creatures did it, not you." 

We set off down the corridor; I presumed Zoë knew where we were going, because I certainly didn't. 

"I shouldn't have argued with them," she said. "But I don't think I had any choice." 

"I don't understand." 

"Well, it's part of my training for emergencies in space." She muttered something I couldn't catch about "known emergencies", then resumed. "We were taught to make instant decisions about which course of action would save more lives. So on the one hand, it was you, and on the other—" 

"—Everyone on the ship." I nodded. "And then, when they said they could sink the ship anyway, that meant it counted on both sides." 

"Yes. Change the premise and watch the required conclusion pop out. Just like programming a robot." She took a deep breath. "Anyway, I still think I should apologise." 

"Wait until this is over," I said. "Then we'll know who's got to apologise, and for what." 

Before Zoë could answer, the floor seemed to lurch under us; the corridor briefly seemed to be going downhill, then uphill, then level again. In all our time on _Liberty_ , we'd almost been able to forget we were on a ship, the swell had been so gentle. Either the weather had got a whole lot nastier, or there was something wrong with the ship. 

We exchanged worried glances, and headed for the deck.


	11. Stormy Weather

It was obvious that we wouldn't be needing our sunglasses. The sky was a mass of dark cloud, against which the ship's superstructure was a darker silhouette, picked out with a few lights here and there. By the clocks, it ought to have been day, but the daylight didn't stand much of a chance against the storm. Cold, stinging rain was lashing down, carried by a wind that seemed half-inclined to carry us away and deposit us in the sea. Around us, the deck was a chaos of overturned sunloungers and parasols. 

"It wasn't like this in the brochures," I said, as we struggled forward. 

"At least there won't be so many people to see us," Zoë replied. 

Directed by brief headache pangs, we fought our way to where our alien captors wanted the first of their devices to be placed. It was on the edge of the main deck, not too far from the bow. By the time we'd got there, we were both soaked to the skin and shivering with the cold. For a moment, I thought I could see a giant serpent rearing out of the sea, but then it seemed to shimmer and vanish, leaving me unsure if what I'd seen was a trick of the light or if I was hallucinating. 

Zoë knelt down in the indicated place, and pulled the first gadget from her handbag. It looked like the other pieces of the aliens' technology — a dull, blotchy, green cylinder, that felt slimy to the touch. When Zoë pressed it into the angle between the deck and the safety railing, though, it quickly began to take on the appearance of the metal. It was plain that in minutes it would be undetectable. 

"One of three," Zoë said. "Now where do you want us to go?" 

*

The aliens, or serpent-men or whatever they were, appeared to want their device somewhere high up in the ship's superstructure. Fortunately, we were able to do most of the climb from the inside rather then clamber about on emergency ladders, which seemed to have been the aliens' original idea. We'd had to convince them, in a strange one-sided conversation that I hoped nobody had seen us conducting. Zoë had gone for the line that we'd be far too conspicuous, while I'd tried to argue that we might fall off and get killed, and then where would their plans be? I don't know which of us convinced them, in the end. 

Even though we had carried our point, the aliens still wouldn't let us take the lift. We ended up using an obscure back staircase: it was out of the wind and rain, but that was about all you could say for it. The floor was bare metal; even though we were barefoot, our footsteps echoed in the empty stairwell. It was all too easy to imagine that people were closing in on us from ahead and behind. Or creatures who weren't people, for that matter. 

Once we'd reached the top of the stairwell, we were directed to a hatch which led to something that was more or less a balcony, on the aft side of the main superstructure. The height gave us a commanding view over the sea, though between the spray and the low cloud there wasn't much to see. Immediately beyond the stern the ship's wake stretched out, arrow-straight. 

While Zoë emplaced the second device I looked out over the sea in every direction. No ships; no aircraft; no spaceships. If communications were still down — and there was certainly no reason to assume otherwise — nobody from the outside world had come to find out why. 

It didn't take Zoë long to get the device in position, and the moment she'd finished we retraced our footsteps down the stairwell. About halfway down, she suddenly stopped, gripping my arm to indicate I should do the same. 

As I'd said, the staircase echoed with every step we took. But when we came to a halt, there was one echo too many. Just one, but it was enough. We weren't the only people in the staircase. Whoever it was, they had to be further down the stairs than us, or we'd have seen them. 

We exchanged glances. Then Zoë shrugged, and we started walking again. There wasn't a lot else to do, apart from sit around on the stairs until the serpent-men got impatient and started torturing us. Hand in hand, we descended the stairs at about half the speed we'd been walking before, listening to the echoes and trying to pick out the ones that weren't caused by our footsteps. 

In the event, we did make it to the bottom of the stairs in one piece, and there was no sign of whoever had been waiting. I'd half-guessed that the aliens would want their third device somewhere near the stern, and sure enough that was where we headed. Now and again I found myself looking over my shoulder, trying to see if anyone was following us. I didn't manage to convince myself either way. 

"It's worrying," Zoë said in a low voice, when I brought the subject up. "I suppose someone must have recognised us." 

"But they can't have. I mean, look at us." 

"Our bone structure hasn't changed. Maybe the security computer here uses automatic gait recognition software." She shook her head. "No, it can't be anything to do with official security. If it was we'd have been picked up by now." 

"So who—" 

She put her finger to my lips. "Shh. Somebody might be listening." 

*

The aliens seemed to want the third device to go, not just as far back as possible, but somewhere below deck level. Taking a circuitous route, we made our way through a minor shopping area, then a couple of residential corridors not too different from the one where Kirabo and his friends were staying. We wandered this way and that, trying to work out which of the stabbing sensations in our heads meant 'colder' and which was 'warmer'. 

Once we got to somewhere the aliens seemed to think was suitable, we tried several doors until one opened, letting us into a dusty room full of broken furniture. The walls were painted with faded pictures of clowns; it looked as if the last proper occupants of the room, before it had been filled with junk, had been a crèche of some kind. Zoë pressed the third and last device onto the underside of a shelf, and headed straight for the door. Before she could reach it, we heard someone outside. 

I suppose that there wasn't any logical reason why there shouldn't have been somebody outside. Anyone could have been walking down that corridor for any reason. But at the time, I was so wound up I didn't even consider the possibility, and I don't think Zoë did either. She pushed the door shut, snapped the light off, hurried over to where I was standing, and dragged me down behind a stack of tables. We crouched side by side, as we had when we'd found the body; I felt Zoë trembling again, and I'm sure I was, too. 

The door slid open; there was a pause, just long enough for someone to stick their head in and take a quick look around. In the dim light from the doorway, I glanced at Zoë. I don't think she realised it for a moment, but she was smiling — grinning, in fact. On some level, she was loving this to bits. 

Then the door shut again, leaving us in darkness, and the footsteps moved away. We still waited for as long as we dared before leaving, though. 

I'd half-hoped that the serpent-men might let us go after we'd done what they wanted us to, but they obviously had other plans for us. We had to walk all the way back to where we'd started, feeling worse and worse as we went. At first I thought it was just tiredness, but before we'd got halfway back it was clearly something more serious. Zoë's face was looking swollen, as if she was coming down with mumps, and every muscle in my body was beginning to ache. 

We'd made it most of the way back to the hatch, and were on an open-air walkway between a swimming pool and a miniature golf course, when Zoë staggered and nearly fell over the railings into a scale model of the Mumbai Dome. I caught hold of her; she felt hotter than she had any right to be, given the wind and the rain. 

"I need a rest," she said. "Just for a minute or two." 

A rest sounded like a good idea to me as well. We sank down against the railings, hugging our knees. I lost all track of time, but I could hear Zoë muttering to herself. It sounded as if she was slowly counting under her breath, possibly trying to make sure she didn't go to sleep. 

Neither of us noticed the passer-by until she almost tripped over us. She was wearing a cape and a hood against the rain, and between that and her own haste to get to where she was going, she very nearly trod on us. To give her her due, once she did notice us she stopped. 

"Are you two OK?" she asked. 

"We're fine," I lied. 

"Don't worry about us," Zoë added. 

The passer-by nodded. "If you say so," she said, and hurried off. 

We waited until she was out of sight, then dragged ourselves to our feet and limped back to the airlock, where the aliens were waiting for us. They asked us a few questions, but I don't think our answers made much sense at all. In next to no time, we were back in our cell, shivering and feverish and not in a state to take much notice of anything. 

There was something gnawing at my mind, though. I was sure I'd recognised the woman who'd spoken to us on that walkway. I hadn't had the energy to look at her properly, but even muffled by the wind and the rain and the ringing in my ears, her voice was one I'd heard somewhere before. 

I worked it out a few minutes later. The woman who'd passed us in the rain had been Tabitha Khan. If one or other of us had paid more attention, maybe we'd have picked that up, perhaps been able to pass a message to her, let her know what was happening on this ship. We'd missed what might well be our last chance of being rescued.


	12. Submarine Studies

The next few hours weren't very pleasant for either of us. Whatever the the aliens had used to disguise us, it had to include some sort of engineered bacteria or viruses; and now our bodies had cottoned on to the fact, and were trying to get rid of whatever it was as fast as they could. It should have been reassuring to see our skin regain its usual colour, and our faces return to their proper shape, but we were too busy shivering and trying not to be sick. 

When our fever had eventually subsided and we were able to take more of an interest in things, I mentioned — trying to be casual, in case our captors were listening in — that the woman who'd spoken to us had been Tabitha Khan. 

"You recognised her voice?" Zoë said. She was trying to sound casual, too. 

"I did." 

"That's interesting. I wonder if... well, never mind. Did you know your hair's gone all streaky?" 

"No, but it doesn't surprise me. Yours is just a mess." 

Zoë pushed her hands through her tangled locks. "I suppose that's what happens if you let a bunch of reptiles get their hands on it. They wouldn't really understand hair, would they? All they've got is scales." 

Whether it was a coincidence or not, I don't know, but the reptiles in question showed up almost as soon as she'd said that. Once again we were led out of the cell, to the chamber that seemed to serve as their headquarters. Their leader was there, this time with several others. 

"We require your report," the leader hissed at us. 

Between us, Zoë and I gave a short and factual account of how we'd got one. We'd placed the three devices as instructed, and thought a couple of times that someone had been following us. No human contact other than a passerby who'd wondered if we were ill. 

"Satisfactory," the leader whispered. 

"Can I ask a question?" Zoë said. 

"You may." 

"You said you were attempting to triangulate a signal. Did you succeed?" 

There was a long pause. Then, a hologram of the ship flickered into view in front of us, slowly rotating. The three devices showed as steady lights in the locations where we'd placed them. Then, as the hologram turned, another light came into view, waxing and waning rhythmically. It was low down, almost at the bottom of the main hull. 

"What kind of signal is that?" Zoë asked. "Radio? Hypercomm?" She leaned closer to the hologram, curiosity written across her face. 

"Neutral particles," one of the other serpent-men said. "Very low mass." 

"Neutrinos?" Zoë looked even more puzzled. "I suppose the ship's reactor could be a neutrino source, but why would you need to triangulate that?" 

"Not the reactor. The signature is different." 

Zoë sounded as if she was getting impatient. "So what is it, then?" 

"We do not know. It must be investigated." 

I guessed at once who would be doing the investigation. 

*

This time the serpent-men didn't disguise us. Instead, we were taken through the pipes again, heading downward, to a small chamber containing an even smaller submarine. At least, I'm calling it a submarine because that's the nearest equivalent I can think of. It looked more like a beige-coloured slug than anything. 

One of the serpent-men with us moved forward and pressed his hand — unless it was her hand — against the slug. A panel slid open, and he disappeared inside. Then I was half-guided, half-pushed into the hatch, with Zoë following. 

Inside, the submarine was tiny, dark and very cramped; the serpent-man was sitting at what I supposed were the controls, while Zoë and I took up most of the rest of the space. When we'd entered the submarine had been full of water, but as soon as the hatch closed the water was pumped out and we were able to breathe normally. 

Above the control board were a few portholes, spaced for the serpent-men's eyes, through which we got a vague impression of darkness and water. The slug was already gliding forward, and I hoped the serpent-man driving it could see where we were going, because I couldn't make out a thing. 

A couple of minutes after we started, the water outside seemed to get slightly less dark, and there was a sense of greater space outside the submarine. The water seemed more shadowed above us, less below, and it took me a few minutes to realise that our slug must be crawling along the underside of _Liberty_. 

It was difficult to judge movement underwater, so I wasn't sure we'd stopped until the serpent-man operating the controls let go of them and turned just enough to fix us with one of those huge eyes. 

"This is the place," he — or she — hissed. 

We looked at each other, unsure what to do. I'd expected that the slug would go back into the ship and we'd get out to explore on foot, or perhaps that it would drill a hole through the hull and stick some sort of probe in. But instead it seemed that we were just going to sit here and look at a shadow surrounded by shadows. 

Zoë made the point, in her usual blunt way. "I don't know what the point of this is," she said. "I can't see a thing. And Lily, can you try to keep your elbow out of my face?" 

"Sorry." I tried to move out of the way, but we were packed in like sardines. 

"Look up," our pilot said. 

We did. The roof had gone black, even darker than the rest of the slug or the murky depths outside. And even though I knew it was just above my head, easily in arm's reach, it looked as if it stretched away to infinity. Within the darkness, little green lights were winking into existence, seemingly at random. It was rather fascinating; I'd spot something in the corner of my eye, turn my attention to it, and then another light would appear somewhere else. 

After several minutes of this, a whole constellation of lights was hanging above us. The pilot manipulated something, and the lights dropped from the ceiling until they were at waist height. They were all in the same plane, a gently-curving sheet of illuminated dots, and another similar sheet hung just above our heads. 

I tried to raise my hand, except there wasn't enough room to do it properly. "What are you showing us?" 

"The outer hull," the serpent-man replied, indicating the lower group of lights. It then pointed at the higher group. "Inner hull." 

The first set of lights sank through the floor, and the second set drifted down to replace it. Above it, in the space before us, more specks of light started to coalesce into vague shapes — cuboids, cylinders, dotted lines. 

"Why does it take such a long time to build the image?" Zoë asked. 

"We are only using passive readings," the serpent-man said. "We cannot tell what our active sensors might trigger." He manipulated the controls again, and a blue dot appeared in the middle of a tallish, slender cylinder. "This is the source of the neutral particles." 

Zoë peered at the blurry cylinder. "Can we get any more detail?" 

"With time." 

It was like watching the tide wash away a drawing in the sand, only in reverse. The lines of dots sharpened into delicate webs of cables, the vague cuboids into chunky boxes with a no-nonsense military look to them. And of the cylinder's true nature, there was no doubt at all. 

"Can you identify the source of the particles?" the pilot asked. 

"Well, yes," Zoë said. "It's a bomb."


	13. A Matter of Course

"I'd say it was a Z-bomb," Zoë said. 

We were back in the serpent-people's hall, halfway through what was turning into a tense debriefing. Once again, their leader's hand was clamped onto my head, and I could feel an alien presence in my mind. Several of the others, including the one who'd driven the submarine, were standing in a rough circle, with Zoë at the centre. 

"A planet-buster?" I asked. I wasn't sure if the question had come from me, or the serpent-man. 

"I suppose you could call it that if you want to." Zoë sounded slightly tetchy. "Of course, it couldn't actually blow up the world if it did detonate. Do you know how much energy that would take? Roughly three by ten to the power thirty..." 

"But it would blow up the ship?" 

"Almost certainly. I think even at minimum yield everything in a kilometre range would be turned to plasma. Depending on the exact mass of the bomb." She turned to one of the aliens. "What sort of readings do you have on the mass?" 

"The mass range is consistent with a Blue Boojum warhead," the alien said. "Manufactured by nations in your West Bloc. Safe radius at minimum yield is five kilometres." 

If the situation hadn't been so serious, I'd have laughed at Zoë's crestfallen expression. 

"Well, if you knew all that, what was the point of asking me?" she said, sounding even more put out. 

The aliens' leader didn't answer that. "You agree that this weapon is a bomb?" it said. 

"Yes! How many times do you need telling?" 

"You are humans." With a sweep of its free hand it indicated Zoë and me. "Why should other members of your species place the bomb on this ship?" 

I thought about it. "I suppose they could make a ransom demand. Shut down the T-Mats so people couldn't get away, and say if they don't get what they want, they'd blow the ship up." 

It was difficult to read emotion on the serpent-men's faces, but they didn't look at all impressed with us as a species. 

"Have you anything else to say to us?" the leader asked. 

Zoë mutely shook her head. 

"I'm sorry—" I began. 

The hand gripping my head let go. 

"Take them back to the cell. They are of no use to us." 

Serpent-men closed in on us, and took hold of our arms. I found myself being half-dragged, half-carried from the chamber. 

"Wait!" Zoë shouted. "Where's this ship going?" 

The leader hissed an order, and our guards stopped. 

"When we were on the deck setting up those detector things there was a storm," Zoë continued, speaking as fast as she could. "The ship wasn't trying to dodge around it, which it would under normal conditions, because the wake was completely straight. So— well, I think we're going somewhere. Aren't we?" 

The leader beckoned, and we were brought back to the middle of the hall. 

"This ship's course has been constant for two days," it said. "In seven of your hours it will pass over a trench in the sea floor. Many of our people live in that trench." 

"This course change," Zoë said. "Did it happen at the same time that communications were shut down?" 

"You are correct." 

"So whoever's doing this, knows about you. Are they trying to attack you?" She paused, fidgeting. "They'd sail this ship to the trench, and drop the bomb in. But you said you could sink this ship anyway, so you aren't in any danger. Why don't you do that?" 

"If it proves necessary, we will," the leader replied. "If we have not yet done so, perhaps we value lives — even the lives of your kind — more highly than you do. Take them away." 

*

"I thought I was getting somewhere, then," Zoë said, and took a morose bite from a high-energy ration bar. "I wish I knew more about these aliens." 

I lay back on my mattress. "What sort of thing?" 

"Well, things like how many of them there are, and how long they've been here. From the way they talk, it's been some time. Enough to build all this stuff inside the ship, and who knows where else." 

"And learn English," I added. 

"Yes. Anyway, I suppose they don't feel strong enough to take over yet. They must be building up their forces slowly." She rubbed her forehead. "I still don't see how they got here in the first place. Half-a-dozen space stations should have spotted them on the way in." 

"Well, they are here. And I suppose now someone's found out where their base is, and wants to blow it up. I wonder who." 

"Someone without a navy," Zoë said. "Or they wouldn't need to hijack a passenger ship. It would have to be a relatively minor group." 

"But they could still hire their own ship, couldn't they? There wouldn't be any need to use..." I trailed off. "They must have chosen _Liberty_ on purpose."

"It looks as if, whatever they do, _Liberty_ sinks," Zoë said. "It's almost as if that's what they're trying to do. Either they blow it up themselves, or the serpent-men do it in self-defence." 

"You sound as if you're making excuses for them. The serpent-men, I mean, not the people who put the bomb there." 

"They seem to have some sort of moral code, don't they? But then they start talking about taking over the world." Zoë finished her ration bar and ran both hands through her tangled hair. "Anyway, it doesn't seem to matter. Whatever we do, as long as that bomb's on the ship, everyone on board dies. Us included." 

"So we need to get rid of the bomb." 

"And you're an expert? How many planet-busters have you defused, Lily?" 

"None." 

"Well, neither have I." Zoë let herself fall back onto her own mattress. "If these aliens are so clever, why can't they defuse it? From the way they were talking, they've got all the specifications. Which is more than we do." 

"Maybe they couldn't get near it." I thought about it some more. "Or maybe it's not a technical thing at all." 

"What do you mean, not a technical thing?" 

"Suppose they're prepared to blow up the ship because they don't think humans are worth saving. Well, if we offered to help them defuse the bomb, that would show humanity isn't as bad as they think. Wouldn't it?" 

"It might be worth a try." Zoë sat up. "We can't do anything while they've got us locked up here, so we've got to— well, cooperate with them." 

"But you said you couldn't defuse it." 

"Maybe I'll think of something when I see the manual." I could almost see her brain spinning up to full power. "A lot of bombs have keycodes to prevent unauthorised use. Enter the wrong code and it's rendered inoperative for good. Or perhaps there's some way of bypassing the difficulty altogether." 

"Why not throw the bomb overboard before it gets in range?" I suggested. 

Zoë shook her head. "It's almost certain to be booby-trapped. Remember all those wires and things we saw on the scan? What we need is some way of disarming it without getting near it." 

"Would it help to find out who put it there in the first place? Maybe we could negotiate with them." 

"If someone's put a planet-buster on a ship with thousands of innocent people I don't think they're interested in negotiation. But I suppose there are other... Anyway, we need more information." 

She jumped to her feet and knocked on the cell door. 

"Hello?" she called. "You're listening to us, aren't you? I want to speak to your leader. I want to help you." 

There was a lengthy pause. Then a serpent-man voice, which seemed to come from everywhere at once, said "How?" 

"It's the bomb. I think I could help you to disarm it." 

There was another delay. Then the voice said "Come," and the cell door opened. Zoë walked through it; I stood up, not sure if I was included in the invitation or not. The door showed no sign of closing, so after a few seconds I followed her. 

By now the route to the headquarters chamber was quite familiar to us, and we hardly needed escorting. The serpent-men's leader was waiting for us. 

"What is your suggestion?" it asked. Like the pilot of the submarine, it turned its head to one side, so that one eye had an excellent view of us. 

"Well." Zoë took a deep breath. "Unless the bomb gets disarmed, you're going to sink this ship. Lily and I don't want that to happen, so it's our responsibility to make sure it's disarmed. Am I right?" 

"You are." 

"Will you help us?" 

"That depends what help you require." 

"I'd like to know what you know about the bomb. If you know what type it is, can you get hold of a manual for it? And do you know anything about who put it there?" She paused. "And what's your name?" 

"My name? Or the name of my species?" 

"Both." She spread her hands. "I'd like to know who I'm dealing with." 

"My name is Narphis. You may think of us as the Sea People." 

"Pleased to meet you." Zoë held out her hand; Narphis pressed his — or her — own against it. "Now, about the manual?" 

*

In the darkness and humidity of the Sea People's headquarters, I'd lost all track of time. The conversation had quickly turned technical, with Zoë delving into what the Sea People's technology could and couldn't do, and it had gone on for what seemed like hours. Then the subject seemed to turn to tools and gadgets, and more time was spent poking around with more or less blob-shaped objects. I could feel my eyes beginning to close... 

"Lily?" 

Zoë was shaking me by the shoulder. I looked up, startled. 

"Lily, I think we've got a plan." 

"That's good," I said, drowsily. "Isn't it?" 

"I'm going to go and investigate the bit of the ship where they're keeping the bomb." 

"But you said that would set off all sorts of booby traps." 

"I'm not going to try and get at the bomb. Just poke around a bit and get someone's attention. Anyway, while that's going on, the Sea People are going to evacuate. Just in case I get it wrong and the bomb goes off." 

"What do I do?" 

"We're going to put you on one of the robot escort ships. Probably Drone-A, that's in the best position. It ought to be possible to do a manual override on some of the systems. If we need any firepower, that's where you come in." 

"Firepower?" I repeated, feeling my heart sink into my boots. 

"You never know when a military-spec anti-shipping laser might come in handy. Anyway, there's no time to lose." She indicated the Sea Person standing beside her. "This is Laush. He'll get you on board the escort ship." 

Reluctantly, I got to my feet. 

"Good luck," Zoë said, and hugged me. It felt uncomfortably like a farewell.


	14. A Choice

Getting on board the escort ship had been a very similar experience to the underwater trip Zoë and I had done a few hours before. Once again, I had been taken to an organic-looking submarine, and once again I'd been left crouching at the back while a Sea Person drove. There was more of an impression of acceleration; we seemed to be zipping through the water rather than crawling. After a little while, the submarine had latched onto the robot ship, and after a few more minutes I'd scrambled my way through a newly-cut hole in its hull into a cramped, equipment-filled space that smelt of dust and old electronics. The ceiling was so low that crawling was the only way to get around. The only light came from indicator lamps on the banks of equipment. It didn't make me feel any easier in my mind that Laush, my driver, had followed me. He was carrying a device in which the Sea People's squishy, organic technology seemed to be staging a takeover of a standard portable communicator. 

It took a fair amount of crawling before I came across what I was looking for: a diagnostic terminal, its screen covered with dust. I wiped my hand across the screen to try and clear the worst of it, then cleared my throat. 

"OK, I've got to the terminal," I said. 

"What's the model number?" Zoe's voice, coming out of the device Laush was holding, sounded faintly distorted. 

I wiped more dust off. "ACL-32." 

"Let me see... Turn it on while holding down D, M and Enter." 

That took me a couple of goes, because I didn't have enough hands. In the end I had to press the D key with my nose. 

"It says 'maintenance mode'. Now what?" 

We went through several rounds of this, until I got to the menu Zoë was looking for. 

"Is there a communications option now?" she asked. 

"Yes." 

"Choose it, and call me. Kirabo's number." 

I did as she'd told me. The menu shrank to half the screen, with Zoë's face in the other half. Kirabo was peering over her shoulder, looking as if he'd just been hit over the head with something large and heavy. Behind them I could make out his room, which wasn't any tidier than the last time I'd been in it. 

"OK," Zoë said. Her voice was still coming from the Sea People's communicator device, rather than the terminal. "Now, is there anything on the menu about firing the primary laser?" 

"Yes. 'Laser targeting and power calibration.'" 

"Choose it." 

"Are you sure?" 

Zoë never likes being asked that. "Of course I'm sure! Just do it." 

The next few minutes were taken up with me reading menus out to Zoë, and Zoë telling me what option I ought to try next. I kept worrying that I'd do something wrong, and select something that would blow up _Liberty_ — or perhaps the robot ship I was on. In the end, Zoë got the laser locked onto the beacon she wanted, and primed. She stopped short of having me fire it, though I could see she was tempted. 

"I think we're ready," she said. "Kirabo, you know what to do?" 

"Yeah." He sounded shellshocked, too. I could see why. Having your missing girlfriend turn up in the middle of the night is one thing. Having her recruit you into a desperately complicated plan to defuse a planet-buster for a bunch of aliens is quite another. 

"Lily?" 

"I suppose so," I said. 

"Here goes, then." 

She got up and left the room. As she did so, the image on the screen flicked to the corridor outside, presumably taken from a security camera. As Zoë went deeper and deeper into the ship, the image followed her, in varying degrees of quality. I noticed that every time the image changed, or a door unlocked for her, it was accompanied by Laush making an adjustment to his device. The Sea People must have gained some level of control over the ship's security system; I remembered that they'd disabled the cameras when Zoë met me by the fountain. 

Now and again Zoë would stop, listening; I presumed she'd heard someone and was waiting until they'd passed. Nobody else ever appeared on the screen. At first I thought it was odd: whatever the hour, surely somebody ought to be awake? Then I wondered if Laush, as well as opening doors for Zoë, was locking them for everybody else. 

After traversing a lot of corridors and staircases that all looked practically identical, Zoë arrived in a much larger space — a tunnel-like chamber. The ends were out of view of the camera, but it looked at least fifty metres long. A huge, vaguely cylindrical structure covered with ribs and regular-looking protrusions ran down the centre of the tunnel, leaving two narrow walkways on either side. Zoë walked slowly down one of these, examining her surroundings carefully as she went. After a while, she knelt down by an access panel, unscrewed it, and began to examine the circuitry inside. 

"Zoë!" 

On the screen, Zoë jumped. I did, too. Then another figure appeared in the view of the camera: Tabitha Khan. 

"Zoë, where have you been?" she asked. "And what are you doing out after curfew?" 

Zoë didn't look up from her tinkering. "What curfew?" 

"Don't you know?" 

"No, I don't. I've been... well, out of things for the last couple of days." 

"It's a security thing. Things were getting out of control with the T-Mat down and food being rationed." 

"If there's a curfew, why are you here?" 

Ms Khan tapped the lapel of her jacket, where what the screen showed as a shiny patch was presumably a badge of some kind. "I've been seconded to security duties. Talking of which, this chamber's supposed to be under guard. How did you get in?" 

"I didn't see any guards." 

"Decoyed away, no doubt. I'll have words with them later. Anyway, exactly where have you been?" 

"I'm not sure you'd believe me if I told you." 

"Then I'll tell you." Ms Khan sounded as if she was about to perform a painful duty. "Whatever you're doing, stop it, stand up, and put your hands in the air." 

"You're not serious." 

"Oh, I am." She pushed her jacket back, revealing a blaster hanging from her belt. She drew the weapon and pointed it at Zoë. "You've been compromised, Zoë. You've been brainwashed by aliens, and I'm placing you under arrest." 

Reluctantly, Zoë rose to her feet and raised her hands. "I'm not under any sort of influence. Check my Silenski implant if you don't believe me." 

"You and I both know the implant isn't foolproof. And if you went over to them of your own volition, that's worse. You'd be a traitor of your own free will." 

"Why do you think I've been in contact with any sort of aliens?" 

Ms Khan sighed. "I heard you and that Carson girl talking about it this morning — when you were running about the ship in disguise. Lucky for us they didn't think to disguise your voices, isn't it? You were talking all the time about aliens giving you orders. I wanted to make sure it was you, so I made it my business to bump into you by accident. Now, if you're as innocent as you say, can you explain that?" 

"I was acting under duress," Zoë said. "I wasn't given a choice. But that isn't important now. Listen, Tabitha, there's a bomb on this ship, and it could go off at any moment." 

"Yes, I know. Don't worry, everything's under control." 

The emotion drained from Zoë's voice, leaving it cold and quiet. "You know about the bomb. Who put it there?" 

"Sorry, can't tell you." 

"But you do know?" 

"Of course." Ms Khan gave what she probably thought was an encouraging smile. "This plan is backed at the highest level." 

"I don't suppose you'd tell me what the plan is?" 

She shook her head. "No, Zoë. You're compromised." 

"So, in other words, you're going to get me and a lot of other people killed and I'm not even allowed to know why." 

"Correct." 

"And there's nothing I can say to make you change your mind?" 

"Nothing." 

Zoë was beginning to sound impatient. "Whatever you're doing, it's going to get you killed too." 

"In the service of humanity, I'm prepared to make that sacrifice." 

"You're going to murder thousands of people in the service of humanity? Don't tell me: You love mankind, it's just the people you can't stand." 

By the look of things, Ms Khan's own temper was rising. "No, Zoë, I'm not going to kill thousands of people. Your precious aliens are." 

"Don't be silly. You're the one forcing their hand. And you've gone to immense trouble to do it, and make your plan impossible to stop. If no-one interferes, you drop your bomb. If anyone does interfere, everybody on the ship dies. And then there's all the difficulty of taking over the ship and getting hold of the bomb and so on. But I can't see what you get out of it." 

"Their plan is to start a war," a reptilian voice hissed. 

Ms Khan jumped and looked around, but kept a steady hold on her blaster. The picture on the monitor changed rapidly, as Laush flipped from camera to camera until he'd found one that could pick up the new arrival. It was Narphis, standing a little way behind Ms Khan, holding an unfamiliar weapon in one hand. At least, I presumed it was a weapon; the surface facing outward was a concave disc made of some bronze-coloured substance, with a spike in its centre. The spike was aimed at Ms Khan, who was swinging her weapon between Zoë and Narphis. 

"They wish a war between our species," Narphis continued. "If the bomb is dropped and kills many of our people, the extremists among us will declare war on the humans." 

"And if you set the bomb off or sank the ship, even in self-defence, you'd kill so many people we'd be forced to declare war on you." Zoë began to lower her hands, but Ms Khan jerked her blaster, and Zoë reluctantly raised them again. "But that would only work if the rest of the world knew you'd done it." 

"Oh, they'd know," Ms Khan said. "And before your reptile friend tries anything, it ought to know that I've been fitted with a dead-man's implant. Kill me, and the bomb goes off." 

"Tabitha, you can't seriously mean to do this." 

"I'm quite sure. These creatures plan to wipe us out, one way or the other. I don't suppose you know about Sea Base Four, do you? They attacked that. Killed nearly the entire crew before anyone could stop them. Now they're trying to subvert us from within. Who knows how far the corruption's gone already? It's got to be burnt out before it's too late." 

"Even granting your premises, you can't seriously be thinking—" Zoë began. 

"Quiet!" Ms Khan waved her blaster again. "You don't believe in difficult choices, do you, Zoë? Walk towards me." 

Zoë did not move. Ms Khan changed her aim, and sent a blaster bolt into the floor within centimetres of Zoë's bare feet. 

"You don't get another chance," she said. 

Reluctantly, Zoë walked forward. Ms Khan promptly caught hold of her and swung her round, such that Zoë was between herself and Narphis's line of fire. 

"Here's a choice for you," she said. "Very simple. Prove those creatures haven't compromised you. Kill that one." 

She placed the butt of her blaster in Zoë's hand, keeping a firm grip on the barrel to ensure it stayed pointed at Narphis. 

"No!" Zoë said. 

"Yes." Ms Khan changed her grip: one hand on the barrel, the other over Zoë's on the trigger. "You've got ten seconds. If you don't, I'll do it for you, and then execute you as a proven traitor. Ten. Nine. Eight..."


	15. Twenty Questions

"Seven," Ms Khan said. "Six." 

Narphis made an odd gurgling sound. 

"Five." 

Laush gently squeezed the device he was holding. 

"Four." 

The screen went black. For a few seconds, all I could hear were thumps and gasps; then the blaster fired, with a noise like ripping fabric, and the screen lit up for a fraction of a second. What might have been the figures of Zoë and Ms Khan were on the floor, struggling; I didn't have time to see what had happened to Narphis. Then darkness again, and an ominous crackling sound. 

I realised Laush's free hand was gripping mine, and I was gripping right back. Neither of us could take our eyes off the screen. 

After a few more endless seconds the screen came on again; I guessed that some sort of emergency light had come on. A ragged hole had been blown in the long structure that ran down the middle of the compartment, and clouds of vapour were belching out. Through the drifting smoke, there were occasional shadowy glimpses of someone moving around, but I couldn't make out who it was. I could hear the hiss of escaping gas, the crackle of something burning, and what sounded like metal grinding against metal, but no voices. 

If I'd been on board the ship, I'd have dropped what I was doing and run down there at full tilt. As it was, I nearly demanded that Laush take me back to the ship there and then. But in the end, I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. Whatever the mechanism was that had been damaged, the trouble was spreading. The top of it was dotted with little grilles, and vapour was already pouring from the ones closest to the damaged area. Then wisps of vapour began to swirl about the next grilles in the line, and the next ones, and so on. The sound of grinding metal was getting worse, too. 

In among the spreading destruction, I heard somebody coughing. Then three figures emerged from what was rapidly becoming a cloudbank. In the lead was Zoë, with Ms Khan close behind her. Neither of them seemed to have the blaster. Following them both was Narphis, whose hands I couldn't see, but presumably still had the weapon he or she had held earlier. 

"To the door," Narphis hissed. 

It didn't look as if either Zoë or Ms Khan were in any position to hang about. In very little time, all three had reached an exit. The camera view changed to show the corridor outside, as they emerged from the compartment they'd been in. The heavy doors slid shut behind them, cutting off the spreading devastation and most of the noise. 

"You little pest," Ms Khan said. Her voice sounded higher-pitched than normal. "I'll break your neck." 

Zoë's voice, too, sounded unnaturally squeaky. "I've just stopped a war. I think the sacrifice would be worthwhile." A particularly loud bang came from behind the closed door; the camera shook. "That sounded like the cooling circuit going. You know what happens to superconductors if they aren't properly cooled." 

There was another bang, and another, merging into a series of detonations. Even through the communicator, it sounded as if the whole ship was being torn in half. 

"That's got to be a cascading magnet quench," Zoë continued, once the echoes had died away. "It'll take months to repair. This ship isn't going anywhere, except maybe in little circles." 

"You won't get away with this." Ms Khan was going for a low, threatening tone, but her voice still sounded ridiculously squeaky. I guessed that there had been helium in the gas venting from the engine. "The details won't matter. We'll have enough evidence of the aliens who sabotaged the ship and then blew it—" 

She broke off, with a gasp. Narphis had pressed a webbed, green hand to the back of her head. 

"Tabitha," Zoë said. "I'm sorry about this, but you really didn't leave us much choice. Do you really have a dead-man's device fitted?" 

The answer came out through clenched teeth. "Yes!" 

"She is telling the truth," Narphis said. 

"OK." Zoë ran her hands through her hair. "You've jammed all communications, in case someone guesses what's going on and calls for outside help. Supposing I managed to get a message out and called in a bomb squad. Would you blow the ship up?" 

"Yes." This time there was a note of triumph in Ms Khan's voice. 

"So it's down to what I can do by myself. Is there any set of circumstances under which I can disarm the the bomb safely?" 

"No!" 

"A lie," Narphis said. 

"Tell me how to disarm it," Zoë persisted. 

Ms Khan glared at her. "See you in hell, madgirl." 

Through the communicator, the sound of footsteps and alarms could be heard in the distance. Presumably, someone had come to see what was the matter with the engine, found they couldn't get in, and summoned help. 

"Can I get to the bomb from within the ship?" 

Ms Khan kept her mouth shut, to no avail. 

"She believes you cannot," Narphis said. 

Zoë took a deep breath, and looked Ms Khan in the eye. "Suppose we forced you to help us?" 

Again, Ms Khan remained mute. 

"Then it would be possible." With the hand that wasn't clamped to Ms Khan's head, Narphis produced two loops of a green, ropelike substance. "Restrain her with these. We shall take her to the bomb at once." 

Having tied Ms Khan's hands and arms, Zoë and Narphis set off, more or less dragging her between them. I'd half-expected Ms Khan to shout for help once she'd been released from the interrogation, but instead she clammed up, apart from the occasional insult directed at Zoë. Again, they managed to move through the ship without meeting anyone, which I'd guess was mainly down to the curfew, and again Laush tracked their progress on the security cameras. 

The compartment with the bomb wasn't far away from the engine room. The entrance hatch, when they arrived, looked completely unremarkable, with the usual sort of lock panel. 

Narphis grabbed Ms Khan by the head again, and the interrogation resumed. 

"If I try to open the door, will the bomb go off?" Zoë began. 

*

I wasn't sure what time it was outside. It felt as if I'd been at my place in the roboship for months, maybe years. It had taken Zoë endless yes-or-no questions to worm the truth out of Ms Khan — or at least, enough of it to get at the bomb without setting it off. There wasn't a camera in the room, so I had to make do with listening to the voices, and trying to picture the scene. 

"OK," Zoë's voice said. "If I enter eight ones on this keypad, will that cause the bomb to go safe?" 

"It will," Narphis's voice said. 

"Zoë, don't do this." This time, there was a new note in Ms Khan's voice — she sounded like someone about to see the ruin of their life's work. "This is humanity's last chance and you're going to throw it away." 

"Duly noted," Zoë said. "Kirabo and Lily, I hope you're both still there. Kirabo, stop the recording, add it to the message pack, and select 'Transmit'. Please confirm." 

There was a slight pause. Then, on my screen, the words 'Message Received' appeared at the bottom. 

"Lily, you should just have received a file. On your menu, select 'Pulse sequence', then 'user supplied', and choose that file. Please confirm." 

I did as Zoë had instructed me, then said "OK. It's done." 

"OK." She took another deep breath. "When I say 'Now', select the test fire option and get out of there, as fast as you can." There was a series of clicking noises. "Now!" 

I pressed the appropriate key. All around me, decades-old machines hummed to life, and directly overhead I could hear the whirr of servos as the laser cannon rotated in its turret, followed by a whine that steadily rose in pitch. Then the ship shuddered, as if struck from several directions at once. 

Laush and I lost no time in scrambling back through the innards of the escort ship. It sounded as if it was under heavy bombardment; here and there, the walls or ceiling were beginning to glow, and several cabinets of equipment burst in showers of sparks. By the time we got back to the submarine, I was already beginning to choke. 

The submarine cast off, and dropped away from the escort ship, heading almost straight down. The pressure in the tiny craft was increasing; it felt as if I was being crushed in a vice. 

Then, a brilliant light flared in the sea above us. A moment later, the sound of the explosion reached us, followed by a shockwave that sent the submarine tumbling end over end.


	16. Aftermath

"What... happened?" I asked Laush. The explosion didn't seem to have shaken him up as badly as it had me. 

"The escort vessel was destroyed," Laush said. "The other three escorts opened fire on it." 

"So the ship's still there? The bomb hasn't gone off?" 

"The ship is still there." Laush checked various instruments. "The bomb can no longer be detected." 

"What about Zoë? And your leader?" 

He manipulated his controls. Some kind of message, in the Sea People's language, briefly played. 

"Narphis orders me to return you to your holding area. Zoëheriot is not mentioned." 

By the time the submarine had returned to its hidden dock somewhere inside _Liberty_ , and I'd been brought through the pipe network to the cell I'd shared with Zoë, I was trembling all over. All the rooms I'd passed through had been completely deserted, stripped down to bare walls and floor. The air had felt dry and chilly, suited to humans rather than reptiles. 

"What's happened?" I asked. "Where's—" 

"Remain here," Laush said. "My orders are to return to the submarine." 

Before I could say so much as 'goodbye', he was gone, leaving the cell door standing open behind him. 

Alone in the cell, I managed to find a few tasks to pass the time: I dried myself as far as possible, and tried to force down something to eat. But once I'd come to the end of what I could do, I sat down and hugged my knees. The bomb might have been disarmed without blowing up the ship, but what had it done to the people in the room at the time? 

I tried to clamp down on that line of thought, to no avail. 

*

"Lily Carson?" 

I'd been sitting on one of the mattresses, hugging my knees, in something like a trance. The voice wasn't unfriendly, but it still made me jump. 

"You are Lily Carson?" 

I looked up. A blonde woman, in her early thirties by the look of her, was standing in the doorway. She was dressed in a green uniform, with a military look to it. In her right hand was a gun of some kind. 

"Yes," I said. "I am." 

"Captain Newman, UNISYC." She turned back, to where I could see the dim outlines of soldiers. "Dortmann, take some men and check the other cells." She looked at me again. "Perhaps you wouldn't mind accompanying us?" 

It didn't seem that I had a lot of choice in the matter. Captain Newman waited for her men to complete the search, and then I was marched out of the Sea People's deserted headquarters, through the same exit Zoë and I had used when placing the neutrino detectors. All the doors were hanging open; it looked as if the Sea People had never been there. 

"Is Zoë all right?" I asked. 

"Unknown," Captain Newman replied. "Dr Heriot has not been located yet." And that was all she would tell me. 

We came out on deck, in the flat area at the base of the horseshoe. There was daylight, of a sort, but the sun hadn't yet risen. I looked up at the superstructure of the ship. It seemed to me that since I'd last been on deck, several of the antennae on top had been damaged or disappeared completely. 

Standing on the deck were several military-looking aircraft, and I was led into one, which had the look of a troop carrier. On the way to the deck, we'd passed several groups of soldiers in blue helmets and battle armour, and it seemed to me that there were more soldiers on board than could be accounted for by just these aircraft. Presumably they'd got the T-Mat working again, or perhaps there was some kind of field T-Mat unit in one of the fliers. 

I was examined by a medic, and then given something to drink, to keep me awake while I was debriefed. Then Captain Newman disappeared, leaving one of her subordinates to take a long statement from me. By the time that was over, the sun was high in the sky. I was left under guard in the carrier, feeling simultaneously exhausted and restless. 

"Lily!" 

I looked around, to see Kirabo being ushered into the aircraft. 

"Are you OK?" I asked him. 

"I'm fine. You haven't heard anything about Zoë?" 

"They won't tell me anything. The last I heard, they hadn't found her." I swallowed. "But they didn't tell me they'd found you. Have you been giving a statement?" 

"That's it. Not that I could tell them a lot. Only what I saw on the monitor last night. You were watching too, weren't you?" 

I nodded. 

He put his hands on my shoulders. "Lily, what _is_ all this? Really?" 

There wasn't any point in trying to hide anything. For the second time that morning, I retold my story. 

"And you don't know what happened after she defused the bomb?" he said, once I'd got to the end of my tale. 

"No. Only that message, to put me back in my cell. That must have come from her or Narphis." 

"And then... And then she'd have been there with an alien who hadn't got any more use for her, and a lunatic—" 

"Stop!" I said. But it was too late. I hoped the Sea People wouldn't have killed Zoë — after all, they'd turned me loose rather than executing me — but supposing they'd set her and Ms Khan free at the same time? It didn't bear thinking about. We sat side by side, neither of us wanting to speak. 

"A millibitcoin for your thoughts," Zoë's voice said. 

We both jumped to our feet. Zoë was standing in the doorway, looking shattered, with what seemed to be a bruise on her cheek. 

"Zoë!" Kirabo ran to her, getting there just before I did. "Are you all right?" 

"Physically, yes. Emotionally, not so sure." Zoë's voice had the cold, distant tone she used when she was really upset. 

"What happened to you?" 

"I'll tell you later. Not now. I can't." She buried her face in Kirabo's chest, her shoulders beginning to shake. 

Kirabo and I exchanged glances, and helped Zoë to a seat. By the time we'd done that, she was definitely crying her eyes out. Five minutes later, she was asleep. She didn't talk at all in those five minutes, just sobbed. Except once, when she said, quite distinctly: 

"I still don't know if I've done the right thing."


	17. Debriefing

The rest of that day, and most of the next one, went past in a blur. All three of us were interviewed again, this time by psychological specialists whose main interest seemed to be making sure we wouldn't tell anyone what we'd experienced, and we spent a lot of the time in a field infirmary getting our sleep patterns sorted out. Zoë didn't have any more crying fits, but still wouldn't say what had happened to her after the bomb had been rendered harmless. And neither she, nor any of the soldiers, would say what had happened to Ms Khan. 

Towards the middle of the afternoon on the second day, we were sitting round a table in the infirmary playing one card game after another, when Captain Newman came in. 

"Officially, you're free to go," she said, without preliminary. "But when you're making any plans for the rest of the day, you may like to take these into account." 

She handed us three cards, no bigger than the ones we'd been playing with. I turned mine over in my hands, recognising it at once. When Zoë and I had arrived at the beginning of the week, two similar cards had been waiting for us. 

One again, we were invited to tea with Lord Claremoor. 

*

After all we'd been through, it seemed faintly unreal to be back in that cabinet-lined sitting room, with his lordship politely listening to our talk and his secretary, still as shifty-looking as before, handing round the cups of tea. It wasn't until we went in that I realised Captain Newman wasn't just accompanying us to his lordship's door; she was invited, too. Or maybe she'd invited herself. There were no other guests, just Captain Newman and the three of us. 

Once he was assured of everybody's comfort, Lord Claremoor took a sip of his tea, set it aside, and looked around. 

"I suppose we had better start at the beginning," he said. 

There was a pause, as if everybody was waiting for someone else to ask the first question. In the end, I said "Why were we invited here? In the first place, I mean." 

His Lordship steepled his fingers. "I have an interest in people, and what they know. Frequently, this interest is shared by others. I make it my business to introduce people to each other whose knowledge may be mutually beneficial. Captain Newman's organisation is among my contacts, and they suggested that I might find you and Dr Heriot rewarding guests." 

Zoë turned to Captain Newman. "Do you know why we were sent?" 

"I could say 'somebody talked.'" She nearly smiled, but managed to stop herself in time. "Seems to me that's all Lord Claremoor's guests ever do. So when we heard he was having dealings with aliens... probably scuttlebutt, we thought, but maybe you two could have a look around." 

"And your other guests?" I asked. 

Lord Claremoor counted them off on his fingers. "Officially, Ms Witana holds a minor office in the World Food Bureau. Her actual responsibilities are, I believe, considerably wider." 

"Don't trust her a millimetre," Captain Newman put in. 

"Ms Khan's visit was her idea — I suspect that she, too, had heard rumours of alien interference. That leaves Martin Dupont. Like myself, a collector of knowledge, but with a more practical and financial slant." 

"Was he a blackmailer?" Zoë said. 

"Almost certainly. I suspect that in this case, he guessed that I had some esoteric source of information, and wanted to discover what it was." 

"Right." Zoë leaned forward. "I presume he was the one who made sure no-one was around that evening. Odds were we two were going out anyway, but he made a point of checking with you, Lily. Ms Khan was going to be at some political dinner. I don't imagine she'd have told him, but he forced her hand by stealing her earring, and then offering to help her find it. And Ms Witana — I don't know, but she was suddenly called away that night. He must have had something to do with it." 

"There, I believe I can help you," Lord Claremoor said. "Graves, what did you do with that cutting?" 

Graves delved in his old-fashioned butler costume and produced a folded piece of paper, a printed copy of a newspaper article. He handed it to his lordship, who in turn passed it to me. 

"Paper doesn't change," he said, by way of explanation. "Some news outlets have the regrettable habit of amending articles after the fact." 

We all read the article, one after the other. It wasn't long: an account of a businessman from Clavius Free City being arrested in India on spying charges. 

"You think this was what she was called away to deal with?" Kirabo asked. 

His lordship nodded. "It would undoubtedly concern her." 

"Anyway," Zoë said. "The coast was clear. Mr Dupont took good care to be seen going out, and went to Oakland Court. Maybe he wanted to fence the earring he'd stolen, or get something to help him hide it. Or he just wanted it established that he wasn't there, either. Later that night, he came back and waited in the garden to see if anything was afoot. Which, as it turned out, there was." 

"Narphis had been visiting me, as she did frequently," Lord Claremoor began. 

"She's a she?" I asked. "Sorry, but no-one told me whether..." 

"In her species, as in many other reptiles, females are larger and more aggressive than the males," his lordship replied, with the air of an academic pinning down a dubious footnote. "In this case, she called to discuss my two new guests." He bowed slightly to Zoë, then me. 

Zoë bridled. "It wasn't any of her business!" 

"On the contrary, my dear. She has every right to know about what happens in this world. In a sense, it is hers far more than ours." 

"One of them said this was their world," I said. "Do you mean they've already taken over? We've been enslaved and we just don't know it yet?" 

"No, no. They simply have the prior claim. They had a civilisation on Earth long before we even evolved." 

I wasn't sure I could believe my ears. "What happened to it?" 

"I've never managed to get to the bottom of that. Some kind of astronomical disaster, I believe — an orbital near-miss, or an asteroid impact, perhaps. The reptiles constructed hibernation chambers deep underground in geologically stable areas, and planned to sit the disaster out. At least some of them were not revived — again, they aren't forthcoming on the details — and have been in hibernation ever since." 

Zoë looked as if she couldn't believe her ears. "For millions of years? That's impossible!" 

"With our knowledge of technology, certainly. But they are here, so it must be possible. As our civilisation developed, we began digging deeper and deeper into the Earth. Sooner or later, it became inevitable that we would come across one of these chambers." 

"Officially, First Contact took place over a hundred years ago," Captain Newman added. "There's a school of thought that says it was even earlier. The first few times, the reptiles tried to wipe us out as soon as they were revived. Take their world back, as they saw it." 

His lordship shook his head. "Now, Captain. That's a very one-sided account. Their records accuse humanity of exactly the same thing: genocide on sight." 

"They would. Anyway, I take it your Narphis was more reasonable?" 

"Quite so. Perhaps she had better luck with the people she met when she came out of hibernation. For whatever reason, she believed that it was possible for our species to coexist. If not within our lifetimes, then eventually. She looked to me to use any small influence I had, to that end." 

"So Tabitha was right, in a way," Zoë said. "They were trying to change us. Mould us into something they could share a planet with." 

"I prefer to think of it as helping us to live up to our ideals," Lord Claremoor said, with an air of gentle censure. "I believe that those in power — those who know about our reptilian friends — are in broad agreement." 

"I'm not sure I'd go that far," Captain Newman said. "We've got contingency plans for a reptile attack. But they'd have to make the first move. No preemptive strikes." 

"Anyway, that was why Narphis was visiting you that night," I said. "And when she went back to the fountain..." 

"We have only her account," his lordship said. "She claims he was waiting for her with a weapon in his hand, and she fired in self-defence. She took the whole affair very lightly. I'm afraid she still finds it hard to think of us as _people_." 

Zoë shivered. "I know." 

"So you made it look like an outside job," I said. 

"That was Graves' idea. He saw at once that he and I would be the chief suspects, even if a weapon couldn't be found. So he suggested that we make it look like an outside job. Narphis kindly melted the lock on the emergency door, and left. Graves and I returned to my quarters, and attempted to establish as much of an alibi as we could." He nodded at his secretary. 

"Going through the accounts," Graves said. He'd dropped the 'butler' mannerisms entirely; his voice was brisk and to the point. "I faked the timestamps, not that anyone thought to check them. Sloppy lot, the security guys here. Not that I'm complaining." 

"I'd hardly expect you to," Captain Newman said. 

"OK," Kirabo said. "That explains the murder. But what about the bomb and all the rest of it?" 

Zoë refreshed herself with tea. "I was coming to that," she said.


	18. Loose Ends

"On the day after the murder, Ms Khan and her co-conspirators decided to put their plan into action," Zoë said. "I don't know why. Maybe she thought Dupont had been getting too close..." 

"I think you might have put that idea into her head," I said. 

"Me?" 

"We spoke to her, remember? You asked if Mr Dupont might have been a blackmailer. And you said, if you'd been him, you'd have all your secrets ready to be revealed at the first sign of trouble." 

Zoë gave me a baffled look. "Of course I remember." 

"Maybe she thought you were dropping hints. I mean, that Mr Dupont had told you something about her, and you were going to publish." 

"That's ridiculous!" 

"Yeah, but she _was_ pretty crazy," Kirabo said. 

"And Ms Witana can't have helped," I said. "She nearly convinced me Zoë was some kind of sleeper agent or assassin." 

"Really?" Zoë asked, her face lighting up with amusement. 

"Really. So who knows what she told Ms Khan about you?" 

"Anyway, her group decided to move," Captain Newman said. "They killed the Captain, took over the bridge, and set a course for their target at full speed. All communications were jammed; they simulated an equipment fault, so that nobody outside suspected the truth." 

"Where did they get the bomb?" Kirabo asked. "And how did they know where to go?" 

"Our investigators are working on that. You recall Ms Khan mentioning that a few years ago, the reptiles attacked a Seabase? In the cleanup, we discovered that several of the deceased were operatives of— well, it wouldn't be wise to tell you exactly which agency." 

"So they wanted revenge?" 

"That's the line we're following up. They'd be bound by the same rules as us — no preemptive strikes — but they might have tried to work round them using, shall we say, subcontractors." 

His lordship cleared his throat. "For what it is worth, I would be inclined to agree with your analysis." 

"Now we come to the bit where they kidnapped me," Zoë said. 

"Narphis came to me again that evening," Lord Claremoor said. "She wanted to know why the ship had changed course, and why communications were being jammed. Then she said she needed a human to work for her. At the time, you were the only suitable candidate." 

"Thanks a lot." 

"So they took Zoë," I said. "They couldn't get into her mind, so they made her get hold of me. Who sent the tablet to Kirabo's room?" 

"Me," Graves said. "I do errands for them, now and again." 

"Then couldn't you have placed the detectors?" Zoë asked. 

He smirked. "They don't trust me that much." 

"We know what happened after that," Captain Newman said. "Dr Heriot and her associates were able to flush out Ms Khan, defuse the bomb, and send a signal to us." 

"Was that what I was doing with the laser?" I asked. 

"Exactly. Dr Heriot programmed it to lock onto a synchronous communication satellite, and transmit her distress signal. Of course, the moment the laser turret started acting contrary to the instructions of _Liberty_ 's main battle computer, the other escort ships detected the fact, and opened fire on it." 

I remembered the explosion that had sent the submarine tumbling. 

"OK," I said. "That takes us up to when the bomb was defused. What happened then?" 

Zoë took a deep breath. 

"The bomb shut down," she said. "You could see it distorting: the insides must have been melting. When Tabitha saw that, she snapped. Broke out of her bindings somehow. If Narphis hadn't managed to stop her, she'd have killed me." She rubbed the back of her head. "I can still feel the lump where she smashed me into a bulkhead. Anyway, Narphis tied Tabitha up again, and we waited until Laush arrived with the submarine. I daresay you've deduced that there was a hatch in the hull leading to that compartment, so they could drop the bomb when they got to the target? The submarine docked there, and Laush came in. Narphis spoke to him for a bit, and he took me to a storage locker a couple of doors away, and locked me in." 

"Why?" 

"He _said_ it was protective custody. That was the last I saw of him — of any of the Sea People. But I heard some of what happened next." 

Zoë seemed to shrink within herself. 

"He went back to where Narphis was. And then Ms Khan started screaming. It just went on and on." She looked bleakly at us. "I suppose they were punishing her in the way they saw fit. I don't know. Just listening was bad enough." 

Kirabo put his arm round her shoulders. "Is that what you meant about wondering if you'd done the right thing?" 

"Yes." Zoë looked up at us with a sort of desperate appeal. "Every step of the way, I did what I thought had to be done to save the ship. There wasn't any other logical course of action." 

"And you did save the ship, my dear," Lord Claremoor said. 

"In that locker, I couldn't see anyone I'd saved," Zoë said. "But I could hear the screaming." 

"You'll get over it," Captain Newman said. "It gets better with time." 

Zoë looked straight at her. "Your people found me in the locker. They wouldn't say anything about Tabitha. Was she... still there when you got to her?" 

"She was." 

"And?" 

Captain Newman paused, as if judging how much to divulge. "Her physical injuries are treatable. Her mental state... things aren't so good there. Apparently she can't talk — just spends every waking hour trying to draw prehistoric monsters on the wall. The doctors don't see any hope of recovery." 

"That fits what I know of Narphis," Lord Claremoor said. "She would want to ensure that Ms Khan posed no threat whatsoever in the future." 

Zoë buried her head in her hands. 

"When I was a girl I wanted to be like her," she said. "They say you shouldn't meet your heroes, don't they?" 

We sat in silence until Zoë had sorted herself out. 

"I've got one more question," she said, with a rather brittle normality. "Lily and I both kept thinking of these creatures as 'Serpent-men', and couldn't work out why. And then when I came in here just now, I got it at once. Last time we were here, you showed us a key, didn't you?" 

Lord Claremoor nodded. 

"Could you open that cabinet again?" 

"I'll do that," Graves said. He crossed to the cabinet, with Zoë close beside him. She reached in, and returned with something in her hand — the triangular tablet that had lain beside the key. 

"'The tablet was wrought of some nameless metal,'" she recited. "'like never-rusting iron, but heavier. It had the form of a triangle and was broader at the widest than a man's heart... And the ghost, in a thin whisper of uncouth, forgotten speech, informed us that the letters on the tablet were those of a language of the serpent-men, whose primordial continent had sunk aeons before the lifting of Hyperborea from the ooze.'" 

Lord Claremoor smiled fondly at her. "'The Double Shadow', by Clark Ashton Smith." 

"Do you mean this really is..." 

"Sadly not. You may remember that there was a film of 'The Double Shadow' in the Fifties. You're holding one of the props from that film." 

"That's right," I said. "They showed it once when we were at school and it was too wet for sports." 

"That's when I'd have seen it, too," Zoë said. 

"But unlike your friend, you went to the length of seeking out the original text," his lordship said. "Once a librarian, always a librarian, I see."


	19. Epilogue

"Are you OK?" I asked Kirabo. 

We were in the garden courtyard, waiting for Zoë. The fountain was taped-off and empty, the secret passage a dark hole in the bottom of its basin, but everything else was exactly as it had been before. As far as everybody else on the ship was concerned, nothing worse had happened than an engine fault, and now that the T-Mat was back in operation there was no reason life shouldn't carry on as normal while repairs were made. We'd all agreed that a night out would do us good, but Zoë seemed to be taking her time changing and freshening up. 

"It's a bit of a shock," Kirabo said. "You meet a girl, and you think she's — well, normal. And then suddenly she turns out to be some sort of secret agent and all sorts of other things. Was any of it real, or was I just part of her cover story?" 

"She isn't a spy," I said. "She's just got mixed up in all this somehow. I don't know how. Her normal life _is_ the real one." 

"Of course, you'd have to say that, wouldn't you? You're part of all this spy stuff as well." 

I sighed. "I just tag along with her. If she gets into trouble, I try to help her. She's a friend — that's all." I looked him in the eye, and made my expression as forbidding as I could. "And don't you dare do anything to upset her. Not tonight. Or I'll make sure you regret it. Got that?" 

"Got it." 

At this point, Zoë finally made her appearance, in an even skimpier and more lurid costume than she'd worn before; she'd even replaced her normal Alice band with a multicoloured one. By the look of her, she was planning to enjoy herself with the same focus that she'd devoted to tracking down conspirators and defusing bombs. 

"Hello," she said. "Ready to paint the ship red?" 

"Are you feeling better?" Kirabo asked. 

"Much. I think I might have been conditioned to recover quickly from traumatic experiences... which is a slightly worrying thought in itself." She kissed him on the cheek. "Anyway, what's the plan?" 

"I thought we'd pick up Shez and Milo, and then..." He grinned. "I wondered about hitting that karaoke place? I want to hear Lily for myself." 

Zoë grinned back. "That sounds like a plan. Do you think we should stock up on things to throw at her? You know, rotten fruit?" 

"Or vegetables." 

"Or eggs." 

"Now just a—" I began, and broke off. I'd seen a movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned, and saw that Captain Newman had joined us. 

"Just to let you know," she said. "This operation is officially concluded. We'll be leaving tonight." 

"Thank you," I said. 

"Dr Heriot," she continued. "I've been doing a little research on your current employer. Rumour has it that they are interesting themselves in a certain field best left alone." 

Zoë shrugged. "How am I supposed to answer that? I don't have the faintest idea what you're driving at." 

"If it is a field you're involved with, you'll know these names: Beckett. Whitaker. Craven. Kerensky." 

"And?" The offhandedness was gone from Zoë's voice. She'd recognised at least one of those names. 

"And if you do, you'll know that their research — and their lives — came to sudden and abrupt ends. I wouldn't like to see you join them." 

"Is that a threat?" 

"No, it's a fact." 

Zoë forced a smile. "Well, thank you for your advice. And if I knew who Beckett and Kerensky and Maxtible and those other people were, I daresay it might even be helpful. Was that all?" 

"Maxtible," Captain Newman repeated, almost to herself. "Thank you." 

She turned and began to walk away, then seemed to realise she'd forgotten something and turned back to us. 

"Be seeing you," she said, and hurried off. 

"What's got into her?" Zoë wondered. 

"It was that name — Maxtible." I tried to replay the conversation in my head. "When she was speaking to you, she came up with all those scientists' names. And then you repeated some of them, except one of yours was 'Maxtible', and it wasn't one of hers." 

"No I didn't." 

"You did. I'm sure." 

"You're imagining things." Zoë waved her hand dismissively. "Come on, let's go. Karaoke time, Lily." 

I sighed again, unsure whether my sense of worry was down to that last conversation with Captain Newman, or the near-certainty that I was going to end up making an exhibition of myself again. 

"All right," I said. "Karaoke time it is."


End file.
